Mobile agent strategies for the provision of public goods: An experimental study

This paper experimentally examines the behaviour of mobile software agents (MAs) as they use various contribution strategies towards the provision of a threshold public good. By combining the e-commerce and economics elements of the contribution game together with MA technology we present an effective tool for analysis of these elements. Through use of this tool we have produced a large set of threshold contribution game experimental results. From analysis of the results observations are made that highlight the effectiveness of using MAs to represent players in an economic game. These observations consist of player strategy analysis, player strategy evaluation, and system equilibrium analysis.