Arbitration protocols for competing software agents

The exchange of goods and services between bargaining software agents requi res new forms of brokering mechanisms which achieve consensus between confl icting pal-ties. Such mechanisms have to be designed in a way that they giv e rational self-interested agents no incentives for insincere behavior. We introduce an arbiter as third party that resolves conflicting bargaining si tuations between the agents. To achieve non-manipulative agent behavior, we investigate three arbitration protocols that avoid different forms of mani pulations and show how each trades net efficiency for robustness against ma nipulations. We describe the applicability of the protocols in bilateral ba rgaining situations and, analyze their robustness against manipulations ana lytically and by simulations. We compare the protocols with Nash's arbitrat ion(1) and the Groves-Clarke tax(2) and characterize situations in which ou r protocols are superior.