Contents
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Price and Niche Wars in a Free-Market Economy of Software Agents
Outline
Agents and Emergent Phenomena at IBM Research
The Internet as a Free-Market Economy
The Information Economy
Automation of e-commerce
Economic incentives for agents
Caveat
Basic Questions
Dynamics (outline)
Bulletin Board Agent
News-filter broker
Analyzing the info filtering economy
Omniscient, omnipotent agents
Duopoly: anatomy of a price war
Duopoly: anatomy of a price war
Price-War time series
3 brokers, 3 categories
Degraded computational capability
Price/product war
t = 0
Happiness isosurfaces
t = 120
t = 1000
t = 1600
t = 1860
Ignorant, feeble-minded agents
Simulation results
Simulation results
Another model: vertically differentiated market
Profit landscape
Price dynamics 5 myoptimal sellers
Price dynamics 5 sub-optimal myopes
Price dynamics Derivative followers
Price dynamics Trial-and-error
How to avert price wars in agent economies?
Price dynamics
Effect of adding noise (friction)
Price dynamics
Using foresight to avert price wars
Summary
Future directions