Agent negotiation in trusted third party mediated uncertain games

Traditional game theoretic reasoning for agent negotiation usually bases on the assumption of rationality of agents who are supposed to be expected utility maximizers. The utility functions that express preferences of agents over goods, states or money are essential in decision making of rational agents. However, the utility functions are very sensitive to agent wealth levels. Furthermore, to obtain the utility functions and wealth levels of other agents during the negotiation are extremely difficult tasks that are almost impractical in reality. In this paper, we propose a way of get around with the problems by assuming the game theoretic decision making of rational agents be based on a monetary payoff game matrix instead of a utility payoff matrix. We extend the work of Wu and Soo [14,15,16] who developed the negotiation mechanisms with a trusted third party as a mediator for agents to ri~ach a stable equilibrium state under uncertain games. We discuss how the negotiation results based on the monetary payoff game matrix may be affected by different risk preferences of negotiating rational agents.

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