Methodologies for the design of negotiation protocols on E-markets

Markets play a central role in the economy, facilitating the exchange of information, goods, services, and payments. In recent years, there has been an enormous increase in the role of information technology, culminating in the emergence of electronic marketplaces. Negotiations are at the core of each negotiation. Economists, game theorists and computer scientists have started to take a direct role and designed different kinds of negotiation protocols for computer products, travel, insurances, or electric power. The design of negotiation protocols is a challenging research direction and involves a number of disciplines including information systems development, game theory, mechanism design theory, simulation and laboratory experimentation. In this paper we survey the key techniques for the design of negotiation protocols and describe the main steps in the design of a multi-attribute auction protocol for a financial market. The case illustrates the interplay of the various methodologies.