A multi-agent platform for auction-based allocation of loads in transportation logistics

This paper describes an agent-based platform for the allocation of loads in distributed transportation logistics, developed as a collaboration between CWI, Dutch National Center for Mathematics and Computer Science, Amsterdam and Vos Logistics Organizing, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. The platform follows a real business scenario proposed by Vos, and it involves a set of agents bidding for transportation loads to be distributed from a central depot in the Netherlands to different locations across Germany. The platform supports both human agents (i.e. transportation planners), who can bid through specialized planning and bidding interfaces, as well as automated, software agents. We exemplify how the proposed platform can be used to test both the bidding behaviour of human logistics planners, as well as the performance of automated auction bidding strategies, developed for such settings. The paper first introduces the business problem setting and then describes the architecture and main characteristics of our auction platform. We conclude with a preliminary discussion of our experience from a human bidding experiment, involving Vos planners competing for orders both against each other and against some (simple) automated strategies

Foundations of Behavioral and Experimental Economics: Daniel Kahneman and Vernon Smith

Advanced information on the Prize in Economic Sciences 2002. Until recently, economics was widely regarded as a non-experimental science that had to rely on observation of real-world economies rather than controlled laboratory experiments. Many commentators also found restrictive the common assumption of a homo oeconomicus motivated by self-interest and capable of making rational decisions. But research in economics has taken off in new directions. A large and growing body of scientific work is now devoted to the empirical testing and modification of traditional postulates in economics, in particular those of unbounded rationality, pure self-interest, and complete self-control. Moreover, today's research increasingly relies on new data from laboratory experiments rather than on more traditional field data, that is, data obtained from observations of real economies. This recent research has its roots in two distinct, but converging, traditions: theoretical and empirical studies of human decision-making in cognitive psychology, and tests of predictions from economic theory by way of laboratory experiments. Today, behavioral economics and experimental economics are among the most active fields in economics, as measured by publications in major journals, new doctoral dissertations, seminars, workshops and conferences. This year's laureates are pioneers of these two fields of research.behavioral economics; experimental economics