A Social Semantics for Agent Communication Languages

The ability to communicate is one of the salient properties of agents. Although a number of agent communication languages (ACLs) have been developed, obtaining a suitable formal semantics for ACLs remains one of the greatest challenges of multiagent systems theory. Previous semantics have largely been mentalistic in their orientation and are based solely on the beliefs and intentions of the participating agents. Such semantics are not suitable for most multiagent applications, which involve autonomous and heterogeneous agents, whose beliefs and intentions cannot be uniformly determined. Accordingly, we present a social semantics for ACLs that gives primacy to the interactions among the agents. Our semantics is based on social commitments and is developed in temporal logic. This semantics, because of its public orientation, is essential to providing a rigorous basis for multiagent protocols. This research was supported by the NCSU College of Engineering, the National Science Foundatio..

The Effects of Business Taxes on Output and Location of the Firm under Uncertainty

[[abstract]]In this article, a triangular production-location model is used to show that when output price is random, the imposition of business taxes (including lump-sum tax, profit tax, output tax, and input tax) can have significant effects on the optimal location and output of a firm attempting to maximize a von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function of profits. In addition, using the concept of differential incidence, the authors also made a comparison of the magnitudes of the impacts of these taxes on the output and location of the firm and indicates that the effects of these taxes differ according to the tax structure.[[journaltype]]國