Negotiating complex contracts
By: Mark Klein ... [et al.].
Contributors: Klein, Mark, 1960-; Sloan School of Management.; Center for eBusiness@MIT.
Series: eBusiness@MIT working paper -- 125; Sloan working paper -- 4196-01; Working paper (Sloan School of Management) -- 4196.
Publisher: MIT Sloan School of Management
Published: 2001
Place of publication: [Cambridge, Mass.]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 15
Subjects: Electronic commerce.
Description: Work to date on computational models of negotiation has focused almost exclusively on defining contracts consisting of one or a few independent issues, linear utility functions, and tractable contract spaces. Many real-world contracts, by contrast, are much more complex, consisting of multiple interdependent issues, nonlinear utility functions, and intractably large contract spaces. This paper describes a simulated annealing based approach appropriate for negotiating such complex contracts, evaluates its efficacy, and suggests some potentially promising avenues for defining more efficient algorithms for negotiating complex contracts.