The allocative effectiveness of market protocols under intelligent trading

Abstract. We study the performance of four market protocols that lead to allocative ef-ficiency: batch auction, continuous double auction, specialist dealership, and a hybrid of these last two. In a former study, we compared them with respect to several additional performance criteria under the assumption of zero intelligence. This paper analyzes three performance criteria under different ways to remove the assumption of zero intelligence. The following conclusions are robust. The number of wasteful transaction is minimized by the batch auction and the dealership. Moreover, the former minimizes price dispersion and the latter minimizes time to convergence

The Strategic Exploitation of Limited Information and Opportunity in Networked Markets

This paper studies the effect of constraining interactions within a market. A model is analysed in which boundedly rational agents trade with and gather information from their neighbours within a trade network. It is demonstrated that a trader’s ability to profit and to identify the equilibrium price is positively correlated with its degree of connectivity within the market. Where traders differ in their number of potential trading partners, well-connected traders are found to benefit from aggressive trading behaviour.Where information propagation is constrained by the topology of the trade network, connectedness affects the nature of the strategies employed

Continuous double auctions with execution uncertainty

We propose a novel variant of the Continuous Double Auction (CDA), the Trust-based CDA (T-CDA), which we demonstrate to be robust to execution uncertainty. This is desirable in a setting where traders may fail to deliver the goods, services or payments they have promised. Specifically, the TCDA provides a mechanism that allows agents to commit to trades they believe will maximize their expected utility. In this paper, we consider agents that use their trust in other agents to estimate the expected utility of a transaction. We empirically evaluate the mechanism, both against the optimal solution given perfect and complete information and against the standard CDA.We show that the T-CDA consistently outperforms the traditional CDA as execution uncertainty increases in the system. Furthermore, we investigate the robustness of the mechanism to unreliable trust information and find that performance degrades gracefully as information quality decreases

Trading strategies for markets: A design framework and its application

In this paper, we present a novel multi-layered framework for designing strategies for trading agents. The objective of this work is to provide a framework that will assist strategy designers with the different aspects involved in designing a strategy. At present, such strategies are typically designed in an ad-hoc and intuitive manner with little regard for discerning best practice or attaining reusability in the design process. Given this, our aim is to put such developments on a more systematic engineering footing. After we describe our framework, we then go on to illustrate how it can be used to design strategies for a particular type of market mechanism (namely the Continuous Double Auction), and how it was used to design a novel strategy for the Travel Game of the International Trading Agent Competition

Automated Trading for Smart Grids: Can It Work?

International audienceThis paper applies basic economic principles which have been developed in financial markets to a future smart grid scenario. Our method allows for autonomous bidding for electricity units to create an emerging market price for electricity. We start with replicating the popular Zero-Intelligence-Plus algorithm and setting it in a electricity supplier-consumer scenario. We identify significant weaknesses of applying this in an electricity market especially when intermittent sources of energy are present or when the supplier to consumer ratio is very small. A new algorithm (ZIP-260) is proposed which includes a measure of fairness based on minimising the deviation across all un-matched demand for a given period. This approach means that no consumer in the system is constantly experiencing an electricity supply deficit. We show and explain how market conditions can lead to collective bargaining of consumers and monopolistic behaviour of suppliers and conclude with observations on automated trading for smart grids

Propositionalism about intention: shifting the burden of proof

A widespread view in the philosophy of mind and action holds that intentions are propositional attitudes. Call this view ‘Propositionalism about Intention’. The key alternative holds that intentions have acts, or do-ables, as their contents. Propositionalism is typically accepted by default, rather than argued for in any detail. By appealing to a key metaphysical constraint on any account of intention, I argue that on the contrary, it is the Do-ables View which deserves the status of the default position, and Propositionalism which bears the burden of proof. I go on to show that this burden has not been met in the literature