Multi-player Multi-issue Negotiation with Complete Information

This paper presents a multi-player multi-issue negotiation model to solve a resource allocation problem. We design a multilateral negotiation protocol, by which rational players bid sequentially in consecutive rounds till a deadline. Every player’s bid is a combination of all resource allocations for himself. In this framework, we perform a thorough theoretical analysis of the negotiation with complete information, which is a preliminary for the more complex incomplete information case. We show that, under a complete information setting, we can derive the negotiation strategies that form a subgame perfect equilibrium outcome. We also show that when a discount factor exists, an agreement will be reached immediately at the end of the first negotiation round. By making trade-offs between issues, the utility that every player gets in the equilibrium outcome is maximized and the solution is Pareto optimal. 1