La négociation du bien-être social utilitaire

The multi-agent resource allocation problem corresponds to the negotiation of m resources among n autonomous agents in order to maximize a social welfare. Contrary to some former studies, the purpose is neither here to simply determine a socially optimal resource allocation nor to prove the existence of a transaction sequence leading to this optimum, but to find a practical transaction sequence among agents, based on any type of graph. For this purpose, we study various agent behaviors in order to identify which one leads to the optimal resource allocation required. This optimum can be viewed as a global emergent phenomenon that comes from local interactions among the agents. After a study of different transaction types, we show that the transaction called “social gift”, is the most efficient one for solving the resource allocation problem associated with the utilitarian social welfare.