Methodologies for the design of negotiation protocols on E-markets

Markets play a central role in the economy, facilitating the exchange of in formation, goods, services, and payments. In recent years, there has been a n enormous increase in the role of information technology, culminating in t he emergence of electronic marketplaces. Negotiations are at the core of ea ch negotiation. Economists, game theorists and computer scientists have sta rted to take a direct role and designed different kinds of negotiation prot ocols for computer products, travel, insurances, or electric power. The des ign of negotiation protocols is a challenging research direction and involv es a number of disciplines including information systems development, game theory, mechanism design theory, simulation and laboratory experimentation. In this paper we survey the key techniques for the design of negotiation p rotocols and describe the main steps in the design of a multi-attribute auc tion protocol for a financial market. The case illustrates the interplay of the various methodologies. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reser ved.