Leveled Commitment Contracting among Myopic Individually Rational Agents

In automated negotiation systems consisting of selfinterested agents, contracts have traditionally been binding, i.e., impossible to breach. Such contracts do not allow the agents to act e ciently upon future events. A leveled commitment protocol allows the agents to decommit from contracts by paying a monetary penalty to the contracting partner. The e ciency of such protocols depends heavily on how the penalties