@Article{sandholm02a,
  author =	 {Tuomas Sandholm and Victor Lesser },
  title =	 {Leveled-Commitment Contracting: A Backtracking
                  Instrument for Multiagent Systems},
  googleid =	 {vD-oy4I0hswJ:scholar.google.com/},
  journal =	 {{AI} Magazine},
  year =	 2002,
  volume =	 23,
  number =	 3,
  pages =	 {89--100},
  month =	 {Fall},
  abstract =	 {In (automated) negotiation systems for
                  self-interested agents, contracts have traditionally
                  been binding. They do not accommodate future
                  events. Contingency contracts address this but are
                  often impractical. As an alternative, we propose
                  leveled-commitment contracts. The level of
                  commitment is set by decommitting penalties. To be
                  freed from the contract, an agent simply pays its
                  penalty to the other contract party(ies). A
                  self-interested agent will be ruluctant to decommit
                  because some other contract party might decommit, in
                  which case the former agent gets freed from the
                  contract, does not incur a penalty, and collects a
                  penalty from the other party. We show that despite
                  such strategic decommitting, leveled commitment
                  increases the expected payoffs of all contract
                  parties and can enable deals that are impossible
                  under full commitment. Different decommitting
                  mechanisms are introduced and compared. Practical
                  prescriptions for market designers are presented. A
                  contract optimizer, ECOMMITTER, is provided on the
                  web.},
  keywords =     {multiagent negotiation},
  url =		 {http://jmvidal.cse.sc.edu/library/sandholm02a.pdf},
  comment =	 {masrg. A review of leveled-commitment contracts.},
  cluster = 	 {14737524566983720892}
}