An exception-handling architecture for open electronic marketplaces of contract net software agents

Software agent marketplaces require the development of new architectures, which are capable of coping with unreliable computational and network infrastructures, limited trust among independently developed agents and the possibility of systemic failures. In analogy with human societies, agent marketplaces will benefit from the introduction of appropriate electronic exception handling institutions, whose role will be to help guarantee efficiency and fairness in the face of these challenges. This paper presents a research methodology for designing and evaluating such electronic institutions. It also describes how the methodology has been applied in order to design and evaluate an exception handling architecture for robust software agent marketplaces based on the contract net protocol.