Weight-Based Negotiation Mechanisms: Balancing Personal Utilities

Conflict resolution, e.g. negotiation, is frequently about an interactive process that forces agents to make concessions in order to resolve the conflict. In multilateral negotiations, concessions might be directed to one or another partner. In isolated negotiations such directed concessions might be less useful, but may become important for interdependent negotiations. We present weight-based negotiation mechanisms that easily implement the concept of directed concessions. As an example we implement and simulate the weighted sum approach. We show that the presented class of negotiation mechanisms results in Pareto-optimal agreements. Not all weight-based mechanisms, especially the weighted sum approach, can generate all Pareto-optimal solutions, but for every discrete negotiation space there is a weight-based mechanism based on a continuous balancing function that can generate all Pareto-optimal solutions.