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<article-title>Meta-Level Coordination for Solving Negotiation Chains in Semi-Cooperative Multi-Agent Systems</article-title>
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<author><a href="mailto:x2zhang@umassd.edu"><name>Xiaoqin Zhang</name></a></author>
<aff>Computer and Information Science <br/>Department University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth</aff>

<author><a href="mailto:lesser@cs.umass.edu"><name>Victor Lesser</name></a></author>
<aff>Computer Science Department <br/>University of Massachusetts at Amherst</aff>
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<title>ABSTRACT</title>
<p>A negotiation chain is formed when multiple related negotiations
are spread over multiple agents. In order to appropriately order
and structure the negotiations occurring in the chain so as to optimize
the expected utility, we present an extension to a singleagent
concurrent negotiation framework. This work is aimed at
semi-cooperative multi-agent systems, where each agent has its
own goals and works to maximize its local utility; however, the performance
of each individual agent is tightly related to other agent's
cooperation and the system's overall performance. We introduce
a pre-negotiation phase that allows agents to transfer meta-level
information. Using this information, the agent can build a more
accurate model of the negotiation in terms of modeling the relationship
of flexibility and success probability. This more accurate
model helps the agent in choosing a better negotiation solution in
the global negotiation chain context. The agent can also use this information
to allocate appropriate time for each negotiation, hence
to find a good ordering of all related negotiations. The experimental
data shows that these mechanisms improve the agents' and the
system's overall performance significantly.</p>
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