A BOA-based adaptive strategy with multi-party perspective for automated multilateral negotiations

What to Bid and When to Stop

An efficient and robust negotiating strategy in bilateral negotiations over multiple items

Every year, automated negotiation agents are improving on various domains. However, given a set of negotiation agents, current methods allow to determine which strategy is best in terms of utility, but not so much the reason of success. In order to study the performance of the individual elements of a negotiation strategy, we introduce an architecture that distinguishes three components which together constitute a negotiation strategy: the bidding strategy, the opponent model, and the acceptance condition. Our contribution to the field of bilateral negotiation is threefold: first, we show that existing state of the art agents are compatible with this architecture; second, as an application of our architecture, we systematically explore the space of possible strategies by recombining different strategy components; finally, we briefly review how the BOA architecture has been recently applied to evaluate the performance of strategy components and create novel negotiation strategies that outperform the state of the art.

Multilateral (many-party) negotiations are much more complex than traditional two-party negotiations. In this article, we explore a model of social network activity, especially clique formation, among parties engaged in multilateral negotiation and the implications that such networks might have on the negotiation process and outcome. Using data collected from 375 subjects participating in a negotiation simulation, our results reveal that, primarily, the negotiator’s perspectives of clique formation (coalition building) — both his or her own and the other party’s — have unique effects on the integrative, problem-solving approaches used in the process and on the negotiator’s satisfaction with outcomes. Secondarily, centrality (manifest as emergent power) has a positive effect on both problem solving and satisfaction. Interestingly, we found that those players who emerged as the most dominant and powerful were not as satisfied (in relative levels) as those who were less powerful.

This work investigates the problem of finding near-optimal strategies for the bilateral negotiation with incomplete information between two competitive negotiation agents for resolving the differences in their objectives and preferences. While there are some former studies of finding negotiation strategies using evolutionary approaches, there are extremely few works on effectively locating the global optimal solution. In this study, we use a genetic algorithm (GA) to find near-optimal negotiation strategies for both negotiation agents conducting bilateral negotiation by coevolving both agents' strategies. Agents learn optimal strategies through trial-and-error, which is done by matching and negotiation of agents of one population with agents of the other population through random pairing in a one-to-one manner. However, a simple GA often cannot find the optimum results for both agents for the following reasons: (i) the premature convergence of a simple GA in itself, and (ii) both parties' failure to keep pace with each other's learning speed in the coevolution. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a GA which has a novel dynamic diversity controlling capability. The proposed method utilizes the accumulated frequency information of the occurrence of individuals in each band of the population for generations. The information is used in a diversification and refinement procedure of the proposed diversity controlling GA. Empirical results show that the proposed dynamic diversity controlling GA generally outperforms the traditional GA for finding near-optimal negotiation strategies.

Designing negotiator agents who adopt real-world inspired negotiation strategies in front of different types of negotiation scenario increases the chance of having better utility and success rate in negotiation-based cloud resource allocation. To realize real-world inspired multi-strategy based negotiating system for cloud marketplace, three following issues are focused in this paper: 1) Designing a new negotiation_strategy_basket with the aim of approaching the strategies of the real-world negotiation markets, 2) Modeling the critical condition of the cloud trading market, and 3) Adopting a new fuzzy decision system (i.e., Fuzzy Negotiation Strategy Selection System (FNSSDS)) for conducting negotiator agents of type resource providers and resource customers in how to select a suitable negotiation strategy from negotiation_strategy_basket according to the critical condition of the cloud trading market. We perform extensive simulation experiments to compare the performance of the proposed negotiator agents with the well known negotiator agents in name MDA (Market Driven Agent). The results show that the proposed negotiation agents outperform the MDAs.

This thesis examines Thailand's international trade negotiations, using a political economy framework. It concentrates on the country's multilateral negotiations in the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and bilateral negotiations with the United States on intellectual property protection. The objectives of this thesis are to analyse the role of the Thai private sector and the autonomy of the Thai government in the process of these negotiations. This study argues that, apart from the public sector, the Thai private sector also plays an important role in the country's trade negotiations. However, the level of its participation varies from one negotiating framework to another. Bilateral negotiations tend to draw more attention from the private sector, because they have more direct impact on individual businesses. This is a result of the high concentration of interest caused by the small number of negotiating issues and people involved in these negotiations. In the country's bilateral negotiations with the United States, Thailand's private sector actively engaged in the negotiating process through various kinds of lobbying activities. The Thai government had to respond to these activities and compromise interests among different groups. In contrast, the role of Thai private enterprises in the Uruguay Round negotiations was rather limited. This provided the Thai government with autonomy in formulating the country's negotiating positions and in implementing Uruguay Round commitments. This resulted in a higher degree of autonomy for the government in the Uruguay Round negotiations, compared with bilateral negotiations with the United States. Thailand's Uruguay Round negotiations and its bilateral negotiations with the United States carry some implications, both for government policy and agencies as well as for their relationship with private businesses. There have already been a number of changes not only in the Thai bureaucratic system but also in the general public's opinion regarding trade negotiations. Nevertheless, to improve the capability of Thai government officials in the negotiating process and to promote national interests, some further changes are still necessary.

Opponent modeling is an important technique in automated negotiations. Many of the existing opponent modeling methods are focusing on predicting the opponent’s private information to improve the agent’s benefits. However, these modeling methods overlook an ability to improve the negotiation outcomes by adapting to different types of private information about the opponent when they are available beforehand. This availability may be provided by some prediction algorithms, or be prior knowledge of the agent. In this paper, we name the above ability as Information Adaptation, and propose a novel Opponent Modeling method with Information Adaptation (OMIA). Specifically, the future concessions of the opponent will firstly be learned based on the opponent’s historical offers. Then, an expected utility calculation function is introduced to adaptively guide the agent’s negotiation strategy by considering the availability and value of the opponent’s private information. The experimental results show that OMIA can adapt to different types of information, helping the agent reach agreements with the opponent and achieve higher utility values comparing to those which lack the information adaptation ability.

While non-governmental organisations (NGOs) do not formally have a voice in intergovernmental negotiations, such as the climate change negotiations, they resort to a range of activities to make their voice heard, including direct contacts with government negotiators, side events, media contacts or demonstrations. These diverse activities are typically classified as belonging to either an inside strategy or an outside strategy, depending on whether they aim at influencing politics directly or whether they seek to exert influence from the outside, via the media and the general public. What explains variation in the use of these two advocacy strategies? The strategies of interest groups in domestic politics have been studied extensively; the activities of groups in multilateral negotiations have so far mainly been looked at in qualitative case studies. This article therefore applies insights and methods from the study of domestic interest groups to groups active in the global climate change negotiations. Three reasons for specialisation in an inside or an outside strategy are put forward. First, the goals of non-governmental participation – namely, to provide accountability and to improve the negotiation process – are potentially conflicting. Second, groups differ in the degree of access to policymakers; if they lack access, they are unable to engage in inside advocacy. Third, groups do not only seek to influence policy, for which inside advocacy is presumably more suitable; they are also interested in their survival as organisations, for which outside advocacy seems more appropriate. These explanations lead to expectations that different types of groups employ different advocacy strategies. In particular, environmental organisations are thought to engage in more outside advocacy, compared with business groups that should rely to a greater extent on inside advocacy. Yet, if we find advocacy differences across group types, we cannot be sure whether these are due to differences in access, or because different groups accord differing priorities to influencing policy and organisational survival. By further analysing the effect of group characteristics, specifically expertise and membership type, this article seeks to disentangle the motivations for opting for a given advocacy strategy. Empirically, the article uses novel data from a survey conducted among organisations active in international climate politics. Over 200 fully completed questionnaires were returned and provided information on the frequency with which organisations engage in a range of inside and outside advocacy activities. A statistical analysis of the data provides evidence for differences across group types. Business groups use more inside advocacy; environmental organisations tend towards an outside strategy. Over and above group type, however, the data also indicate that experience increases the use of inside advocacy: across all group types, the longer a group has been involved in climate change negotiations, the more it uses inside advocacy. In contrast, membership type has, according to the analysis, no effect on advocacy behaviour.The article contributes to the literature on interest group strategies by looking at strategies at the international level. By comparing the advocacy behaviour of different groups active in the climate change negotiations, it also helps understand the role and influence of these different groups in the negotiations. If we assume that advocacy activities differ in their effectiveness, it is important to take into account variation in the use of advocacy strategies. As the value of non-state participation in intergovernmental negotiations stems from the diversity of views and ideas that different stakeholders can bring to the process, we need to ask whether all views and ideas have the same chance of being heard. The findings here are hence relevant for debates on the legitimacy of the negotiations, as well as, more generally, on the role of civil society in environmental governance.

Over the past decade, multiple attempts have been made to curb North Korea’s development of a nuclear program. Major world powers such as the United States and China have reached out to Pyongyang through bilateral and multilateral negotiation processes. The Six-Party Talks, the current negotiation mechanism used to discuss options for a potential denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, have brought back hopes that a deal might one day be reached. What type of framework is provided by the Six-Party Talks? How have parties’ negotiation behaviors been influenced by the Talks, and how have they in turn impacted the process? Could this negotiation mechanism eventually become more institutionalized? Although this process has not yet emerged as a successful example of an institution that can influence North Korea’s determination to become a nuclear power, it has moved beyond its infancy and should be considered a viable tool within foreign policy options.

To illustrate how arguing actually works and how it matters we draw on a number of empirical studies that have been undertaken within a larger project on ‘Arguing and Bargaining in Multilateral Negotiations’. We discuss conditions under which arguing leads to changes in actors' persuasions and, thus, influences the process and outcomes of negotiations. These conditions refer to the institutional and normative features of the social context in which negotiations take place and characteristics of speakers and specific framing strategies they use to make arguments resonate with existing causal or normative beliefs.

At first blush, it might appear that the linkages between the negotiations on agriculture being conducted in the contexts of a bilateral CanadianAmerican Free Trade Area (CAFTA) and the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations (MTNs) would be rather tenuous. This is for several reasons. First, the primary agricultural trade interest of both countries is focused on the bigticket items of grains and oilseeds, and these are traded almost entirely off-shore. Second, the agricultural commercial diplomacy of both countries is directed primarily at Europe and Japan rather than at each other. Third, insofar as agricultural trade negotiations have become concerned with reducing and eliminating the trade-distorting subsidies provided to farmers by national agricultural policies, both countries have to use the offer to dismantle their farm programs where it will provide most negotiating leverage, which is in Geneva rather than in the bilateral trade negotiations (BTNs). These are three important reasons why early limits might be encountered to the oft-expressed hope and expectation that the BTNs will provide constructive arrangements in agriculture that can serve as models for the MTNs. However, closer examination shows that there are indeed numerous and important interfaces between the two sets of negotiations in terms both of broad common interests and in the finer detail of the ways in which particular issues might be handled. First and foremost, it is decisively important to both the United States and Canada that the agricultural BTNs send the right signals to other countries. This means that the two countries must demonstrate clearly and unequivocally that they can agree to liberalize continental trade in farm and food products, not only by removing frontier measures but, more important, also by changing those elements of national agricultural policies and programs that harm the legitimate trade interests of the negotiating partner. Furthermore, providing the right demonstration effect requires that continental agricultural trade liberalization be on the widest possible scale with few exceptions. Second, both countries have much to gain if they can adopt a common stance in the MTNs. In particular, the reality of the distribution of influence means the results for Canada of the MTNs will be augmented if Canada can support negotiating approaches favored by the United States. By the same token, U.S. negotiating proposals would be strengthened if they were supported by an important member of the Cairns Group. Thus, the BTNs provide the opportunity for seeking and evolving mutually supportive MTN negotiating positions. Third, the BTNs are throwing up all the same issues that will have to be confronted in Geneva. At a minimum, having to address them early means that both countries' negotiators will enter the agricultural component of the MTNs exceptionally well prepared. More important, the BTNs provide a testing ground for alternative approaches and prototype solutions to specific issues, some of which may be subsequently adopted multilaterally. It is to these that we now turn.

In the previous researches, the strategies for multilateral negotiation are simple methods that bring own proposal close to opponentpsilas proposal. However, in multilateral negotiation, it is required to reflect each otherpsilas preferences for increasing optimal outcomes. This strategy is called win-win strategy. In order to realize win-win negotiation strategy, we should consider two points. The first point is to take account of each otherpsilas preferences. Considering each otherpsilas preferences enables to increase mutual benefits. The second point is a concession strategy to opponents. The difference of each otherpsilas concession strategy causes imbalance of their benefits. For example, when an agent makes concession largely and an opponent makes little concession at the beginning of the negotiation, the agent might make a loss. The solution of this problem is that the agents acquire the concession strategy that can respond to various opponents. This paper is proposed an extended model from our previous research.

This article argues that the stalling of the Doha Round negotiations is a forsaken opportunity for developing countries. Since the first deadline of Doha Round was missed in 2005, developed countries have changed their strategy of achieving free trade through multilateral negotiations, towards achieving it in regional or bilateral negotiations. Therefore, developing countries have had to stop bargaining in a considerable less hierarchical system and being compelled to bargain in a scenario characterized by power asymmetries. They have also swapped free trade based on non-discriminative multilateral principles, for preferential and discriminative trade treatment.

Fox a multi-agent electronic negotiating environment to be successful, intelligent agents should be capable of adapting their negotiation strategies and tactics to achieve an agreement with optimized profit. This paper aims to present some findings from which negotiating intelligent agents in electronic commerce start negotiating using a simplified standard protocol in conjunction with a combined negotiation. Taking advantage of a new developed evolutionary algorithm, agents configure their negotiation strategies somehow they can get more profit. They can use fuzzy fairness function to have behavior with fairness or without fairness.