ISSUES IN MULTI AGENT RESOURCE ALLOCATION

Abstract

The allocation of resources within a system of autonomous agents, that not only havepreferences over alternative allocations of resources but also actively participate in com-puting an allocation, is an exciting area of research at the interface of Computer Scienceand Economics. This paper is a survey of some of the most salient issues in MultiagentResource Allocation. In particular, we review various languages to represent the pref-erences of agents over alternative allocations of resources as well as different measuresof social welfare to assess the overall quality of an allocation. We also discuss pertinentissues regarding allocation procedures and present important complexity results. Ourpresentation of theoretical issues is complemented by a discussion of software packagesfor the simulation of agent-based market places. We also introduce four major applica-tion areas for Multiagent Resource Allocation, namely industrial procurement, sharingof satellite resources, manufacturing control, and grid computing