Negotiation Game Research Articles

Nash Smoothing on the Test Bench: Hα-Essential Equilibria

Nash’s [1953] demand game models the second step in a “two-move game” that formalizes his “Negotiation Model”. Nash claimed for any two-person bargaining game [Formula: see text] the existence of a unique stable equilibrium of its associated second move demand game that by its payoff vector supports the symmetric Nash solution of that bargaining game. Nash’s negotiation game is considered the first contribution to the Nash program. Only weaker versions of stability than that claimed by Nash have been formally proven later by other authors. However, Nash’s request for “studying the relative stabilities” of the demand game’s equilibria has never been complied with. By performing that task, we establish analogous stability results for all generalized Nash solutions and thereby disprove Nash’s “unique stability” claim. Furthermore, we explain the impact of our result on the Nash solution with endogenous variable threats (NBWT) of the two move negotiation game, which is defined as the symmetric Nash solution of that bargaining game [Formula: see text] whose status quo point [Formula: see text] is the unique payoff vector of the payoff-equivalent equilibria of the first move threat game.

PÚBLICO-PRIVADO NO FINANCIAMENTO DA EDUCAÇÃO ESPECIAL: QUEM GANHA E QUEM PERDE NO MERCADO DA BENEMERÊNCIA?

ABSTRACT: This article aims to analyze the game of disputes and negotiations for public resources between public-private partnerships in special education funding. The discussions come from the bibliographic and documental review of works aligned with our objective, supported by the theoretical assumptions of historical-dialectical materialism (MARX, 1985). In the context of the State's exoneration concerning social policies, we perceived in the consulted sources that the public-private partnerships win the dispute in the benemerence market to the expense of the special education public, seeking the resources of public funding and participation in the direction of educational policies. It was also evident that the partnership between the State and the private sector contributed to public education precariousness, fueling tensions between conquered and effective rights and the non-compliance with PNE 2014-2024 goals and the agreements signed between Brazil and international organizations, such as the Declaration of Salamanca (1994). On the other hand, the findings revealed some exit ways to combat the social and educational apartheid disseminated by the business class seeking to dispute for the public fund: develop organization capacity, access to information, and internal communication to ensure public investments; overcome centralized management in school spaces; and strengthen social control through social and popular participation.

A dynamic climate negotiation game achieving full cooperation

We present a repeated participation game where countries form a coalition for international environmental agreements over infinitely many periods. Countries may leave and re-enter coalitions. Payoff transfers are possible. In contrast to the literature on stable coalitions in a static model, we show that there exists a state-dependent subgame perfect equilibrium where the grand coalition forms in every period if countries are sufficiently patient. The grand coalition forms under countries' self-fulfilling belief that small coalitions will dissolve or enlarge to the grand coalition with an unfavorable transfer to non-participants. We further show that if coalitions are irreversible, the grand coalition gradually forms in finitely many periods in every Markov perfect equilibrium. The results are independent of a particular solution for the bargaining problem of coalition benefits.

Edu-Larp as Revision of Subject-Matter Knowledge

The paper presents theoretical foundations of the author's approach to the design of edu-larps. It is deliberately steering away from cross-disciplinary teaching, artistic education or soft skills training in order to advocate larps tailored to single school subjects, focused on integration and consolidation of curricular knowledge. Putting larp in the context of applied drama, or Drama in Education, the text argues that well-designed edu-larp is likely to be accepted by the average teacher, not just by dedicated and trained drama educators. The concept of print-and-play “larp for dummies” downplays the importance of preparation, acting and immersion, while emphasising the game-like structure of goals and conflicts: gameplay set to work alongside role-play. Therefore, the ideas and tools borrowed from video games and board games design can be useful in the creation of edu-role plays, breeding a form which might be called 'gamified drama'. The recommended function for edu-larps is final revision of a large textbook unit, an idea discussed on the example of high-school history classes. The suggested model for classrom larp is a negotiation game between conflicted but cooperating factions, divided into three stages: a) preparation of all factions separately; b) informal meeting of all factions shortly before the official talks; c) official negotiation session which is supposed to bring forward all major (textbook-based!) issues for public debate. The paper ends with a section on troubleshooting, i.e. an overview of risk factors frequently pointed in the discussion of game-based learning, with ideas of how to eliminate or minimise the risks through careful design. Referenced sources come from the fields of edu-larp, edu-drama, game-based learning, and general educational theory.

Pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV in Brazil: hopes and moral panic in the social construction of a biomedical technology

This paper addresses the role emotions play in the social assemblage of medicines and technical processes in the response to the HIV called pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV. We describe a series of stages and processes in the social construction of PrEP in Brazil from the run-up to the launch of the initiative by the Ministry of Health to the subsequent implementation of the strategy by public health services. To understand the meanings and symbolism assigned to this biomedical technology, we examined the hopes underpinning scientific, government and non-governmental narratives, clinical processes and health policy. The social trajectory of PrEP was influenced not only by these hopes but also by fears and concerns about the impact of this approach to HIV prevention on lifestyles and modes of sexual governance. The evidence used in this study comes from interviews with health professionals and AIDS activists, anthropological fieldwork, scientific articles and documentary analysis. Our findings provide important insights into how emotions have shaped the meanings assigned to PrEP and shed light on the complex game of negotiation involved in defining responses to the HIV epidemic.

Having no negotiation power does not matter as long as you can think creatively: the moderating role of age

PurposeThe literature regarding the effect of power on negotiation strategies remains scattered and inconsistent. This study aims to propose that the effect of power on negotiation strategies is contingent on contextual variables but also on individual differences among negotiators. Specifically, the authors hypothesize that creativity moderates the effect of power such that low-power, as compared to high-power negotiators, use more collaborative and less competitive strategies and further report lower fixed-pie perception (i.e. perception of a counterpart’s goals and interests as diametrically opposite to one’s own goals and interests) when they can be creative. Moreover, the authors hypothesize that negotiators’ age buffers the moderated effect of power.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted two experiments and a cross-sectional field study. Participants in Studies 1 and 2 played a negotiation game in dyads. Study 1 manipulated power as status (manager vs employee), whereas Study 2 manipulated power as Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (i.e. power to exit the negotiation without a deal). Accordingly, participants in Study 2 had strong vs weak Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement. In both studies, power was manipulated within dyads. Moreover, in both studies, the authors manipulated creativity (high vs low) between dyads. The chronological age of negotiators was measured in both studies and served as an additional moderator. Study 3 (preregistered) aimed to replicate the experiment results in the field.FindingsStudy 1 provided partial support for the hypothesis about collaborative strategies. Study 2 fully supported the hypothesis about the role of power and creativity on FPP and on collaboration (but not on competition). Study 3 did not support the power by creativity hypothesis. Interestingly, Studies 1 and 2 supported the power × creativity × age interaction hypothesis when predicting collaboration, while Study 3 supported the three-way interaction when predicting competition. Furthermore, Study 2 provided full support for the three-way interaction hypothesis when predicting FPP, while Study 3 provided partial support for this hypothesis. Altogether, the three studies largely replicated and complemented each other and revealed the robustness of the examined effects.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings of this research extend the literature on power on the one hand and negotiation and conflict management on the other and shed light on the inconsistent results regarding the role of power in collaboration and competition (De Dreu, 1995; De Dreu and Van Kleef, 2004; Overbeck and Park, 2001; Overbeck et al., 2006). Additionally, this research reconciles the inconsistent literature on creativity, conflict management and prosocial behavior (Gino and Ariely, 2012; Gino and Wiltermuth, 2014; Wilson and Thompson, 2014). Finally, the findings touch upon the aging literature as well and shed light on the role of age on conflict management (for a review, see Beitler et al., 2018) and on the interconnection between age, power and creativity.Practical implicationsThe findings are relevant to organizations characterized by power asymmetries (e.g. employee/manager) and inform practitioners about the main determinants of collaboration-based negotiations at work.Social implicationsThe findings extend the literature on power on the one hand and negotiation and conflict management on the other and shed light on the inconsistent results regarding the role of power in collaboration and competition.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study investigating the moderating role of creativity in the relationship between negotiation power and negotiation strategies. Moreover, the moderating role of participant age in such relationships has been, to date, largely uninvestigated.

Preplay Negotiations with Unconditional Offers of Side Payments in Two-Player Strategic-Form Games: Towards Non-Cooperative Cooperation

I consider strategic-form games with transferable utility extended with a phase of negotiations before the actual play of the game, where players can exchange a series of alternating (turn-based) unilaterally binding offers to each other for incentive payments of utilities after the play, conditional only on the recipients playing the strategy indicated in the offer. Every such offer transforms the game payoff matrix by accordingly transferring the offered amount from the offering player’s payoff to the recipient’s in all outcomes where the indicated strategy is played by the latter. That exchange of offers generates an unbounded-horizon, extensive-form preplay negotiations game, which is the focus of this study. In this paper, I study the case where the players assume that their opponents can terminate the preplay negotiations phase at any stage. Consequently, in their negotiation strategies, the players are guided by myopic rationality reasoning and aim at optimising each of their offers. The main results and findings include a concrete algorithmic procedure for computing players’ best offers in the preplay negotiations phase and using it to demonstrate that these negotiations can generally lead to substantial improvement of the payoffs for both players in the transformed game, but they do not always lead to optimal outcomes, as one might expect.

Japanese and Chinese Strategies and their Game of RCEP negotiations on Rules of Data Flow

Japanese and Chinese Strategies and their Game of RCEP negotiations on Rules of Data Flow

Deep reinforcement learning with emergent communication for coalitional negotiation games.

For tasks intractable for a single agent, agents must cooperate to accomplish complex goals. A good example is coalitional games, where a group of individuals forms coalitions to produce jointly and share surpluses. In such coalitional negotiation games, how to strategically negotiate to reach agreements on gain allocation is however a key challenge, when the agents are independent and selfish. This work therefore employs deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to build autonomous agent called DALSL that can deal with arbitrary coalitional games without human input. Furthermore, DALSL agent is equipped with the ability to exchange information between them through emergent communication. We have proved that the agent can successfully form a team, distribute the team's benefits fairly, and can effectively use the language channel to exchange specific information, thereby promoting the establishment of small coalition and shortening the negotiation process. The experimental results shows that the DALSL agent obtains higher payoff when negotiating with handcrafted agents and other RL-based agents; moreover, it outperforms other competitors with a larger margin when the language channel is allowed.

Reframing Best alternatives to negotiated agreements in Representative Negotiations in Sports

The paper starts with differentiating between the positional and interest-based negotiation styles for reaching the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA). It outlines the main problems of positional bargaining and the role of agents in representative negotiations in sports. The paper aims at specifying negotiation styles and tactics/games that could produce optimal win-win solutions in sports. It focuses on the need of tactical flexibility, timing, collaboration, issue-linkage and leverage creation that could possibly reframe BATNAs for reaching mutual gain agreements and optimal win-win solutions. The paper aims is to propose solutions for reaching agreements in representative negotiations in sports. The methodology’s starting point is BATNA. The analytical framework includes both choosing the appropriate negotiation style (positional or interest-based) and tactics (negotiation games) to end up with a given strategy. Principled negotiation and mutual gain approach are suggested as solutions. The results of the analysis could be summarized in four categories. The first is the importance of considering the specifics of sports negotiations, especially the advantages and disadvantages of using agents as representatives. Here short versus long-term interests have to be weighed. The second is the advancement of issue linkages, creative alternatives for win-win solutions, leverage and appropriate bargaining style. The third is the focus on the process of reframing BATNAS as a process of evaluating alternatives, seeking leverage but maintaining credibility and flexibility. The fourth is the application of the mutual gain approach to expand the frontier of possibilities. Here the most important is the brainstorming session and the concept of the next best solution.

Decentralised task allocation using GDL negotiations in Multi-agent system

In large distributed systems, the optimization algorithm of task scheduling may not meet the special requirements of the domain control mechanism, i.e. robustness, optimality, timeliness of solution and computational ease of processing under limited communication. In or- der to satisfy these requirements, a novel decentralized agent scheduling method for dynamic task allocation problems based on Game Descrip- tion Language (GDL) and Game Theory is proposed. Specifically, we define the task allocation problem as a stochastic game model, in which the agent's utility is derived from the marginal utility, and then prove that the global optimal task allocation scheme resides in the Nash equi- librium set by the non-cooperative game. In order to generate an optimal solution, we define Multi-agent Negotiation Game (MNG), in which ne- gotiations are held between agents to decide which tasks to act on next. Building on this, we make a simple extension to adopt GDL more suit- able for negotiations and propose to use it to model such negotiation scenarios. Finally, we use a negotiation example to show that our ap- proach is more amenable to automatic processing by autonomous agents and of great practicality than a centralized task scheduler.

Discussions of Effective Skills for Negotiations: A Field Study

While many studies have discussed and analyzed negotiation skills, only a few studies explored which negotiation skills are effective in negotiation learners' eyes. This research project invited nine participants to take six role-playing negotiation games with a qualitative approach to fill the research gap. With the field study, six themes were identified. The results of this study are not only valuable to negotiation teaching, as it reveals negotiation beginners' learning interests, but it is also helpful for further studying the "win-win" model negotiation.

A Study on the Process of Building Trust Between Participants in through Negotiation Games

A Study on the Process of Building Trust Between Participants in through Negotiation Games

Human-computer Coalition Formation in Weighted Voting Games

This article proposes a negotiation game, based on the weighted voting paradigm in cooperative game theory, where agents need to form coalitions and agree on how to share the gains. Despite the prevalence of weighted voting in the real world, there has been little work studying people’s behavior in such settings. This work addresses this gap by combining game-theoretic solution concepts with machine learning models for predicting human behavior in such domains. We present a five-player online version of a weighted voting game in which people negotiate to create coalitions. We provide an equilibrium analysis of this game and collect hundreds of instances of people’s play in the game. We show that a machine learning model with features based on solution concepts from cooperative game theory (in particular, an extension of the Deegan-Packel Index) provide a good prediction of people’s decisions to join coalitions in the game. We designed an agent that uses the prediction model to make offers to people in this game and was able to outperform other people in an extensive empirical study. These results demonstrate the benefit of incorporating concepts from cooperative game theory in the design of agents that interact with people in group decision-making settings.

Effects of power on negotiations: a comparison of collaborative versus competitive approach

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine two opposing approaches to the effects of power on negotiation: a “collaborative approach” of power and a “competitive approach” of power. Accordingly, the authors state oppositional hypotheses based on each approach. This study further investigates the mediating role of the perceived threat of the negotiation and the moderating role of negotiation topic (i.e. topics that touch on one’s power position versus topics that are related to the tasks one needs to perform) in this relationship. Finally, the authors state a moderated mediation hypothesis where they expected that the negotiation topic would moderate the indirect effect of power on negotiation strategies.Design/methodology/approachA vignette study (N = 279) and a negotiation game (N = 138) were conducted where the power within dyads was manipulated.FindingsStudy 1 showed that powerholders prefer collaborative strategies, whereas powerless negotiators prefer competitive strategies. Perceived threat of the negotiation mediated this effect. Furthermore, both Studies 1 and 2 showed that the negotiation topic moderates the effect of power on negotiation strategies providing further support for the collaborative approach of power. Finally, Study 1 provided partial support for the moderated mediation hypothesis.Research limitations/implicationsBoth Studies 1 and 2 are experimental studies. A field study should try to replicate these results in the future.Practical implicationsThis study illuminates the effects of power on negotiation and addresses inconsistent findings in the negotiation literature. The results might be of great importance to large organizations where power asymmetries constitute an integral part of the employee/manager interactions.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to show the moderating role of negotiation topic in the relationship between power and negotiation.

External bargaining versus internal manipulation: A theory of managerial delegation

Does the competition mode influence the delegation decisions of the firm owners? By constructing a vertical negotiation game model, we find that under Cournot competition in the downstream market, the downstream firm's owner will not choose delegation, whereas under Bertrand competition, the downstream firm's owner will choose delegation. If the product substitution is relatively large, the adoption of delegation management by the owners of downstream firms under Bertrand competition will bring higher profits. It further shows that compared with the situation of no delegation, delegation management may reverse the social welfare ranking under Bertrand and Cournot competitions.

Auto-Scaling Network Service Chains Using Machine Learning and Negotiation Game

Network Function Virtualization (NFV) enables Network Operators (NOs) to efficiently respond to the increasing dynamicity of network services. Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) running on commercial off-the-shelf servers are easy to deploy, update, monitor, and manage. Such virtualized services are often deployed as Service Chains (SCs), which require in-sequence placement of computing and memory resources as well as routing of traffic flows. Due to the ongoing migration towards cloudification of networks, the concept of auto-scaling which originated in Cloud Computing, is now receiving attention from networks professionals too. Prior studies on auto-scaling use measured load to dynamically react to traffic changes. Moreover, they often focus on only one of the resources (e.g., compute only, or network capacity only). In this study, we consider three different resource types: compute, memory, and network bandwidth. In prior studies, NO takes auto-scaling decisions, assuming tenants are always willing to auto-scale, and Quality of Service (QoS) requirements are homogeneous. Our study proposes a negotiation-game-based auto-scaling method where tenants and NO both engage in the auto-scaling decision, based on their willingness to participate, heterogeneous QoS requirements, and financial gain (e.g., cost savings). In addition, we propose a proactive Machine Learning (ML) based prediction method to perform SC auto-scaling in dynamic traffic scenario. Numerical examples show that our proposed SC auto-scaling methods powered by ML present a win-win situation for both NO and tenants (in terms of cost savings).

Transitions from Infinite to Finite Games as Critical Moments

This theory article argues that negotiation is often played as a finite game that consists of a known number of players using an agreed‐upon set of rules (when parties are bargaining in good faith) aimed at achieving a specific outcome. However, activities and events leading up to negotiation can be viewed as an infinite game that has no fixed entities such as personnel, rules, and outcomes. Thus, a critical moment occurs when parties agree to make the transition from some infinite game, like conflict, to the finite game of negotiation. This article explores the conditions leading up to this critical transition and provides two examples of negotiations—one that successfully made the transition and one in which the transition did not occur—to illustrate how these conditions function in actual contexts.

Negotiation game for joint IT and energy management in green datacenters

As the power demand of datacenters is increasing sharply, a promising solution is to power datacenters locally by renewable energies. However, one of the main challenges when operating such green datacenters is to conciliate the intermittent power supply and the power demand. To deal with this problem, we view the green datacenter as two sub-systems, namely, Information Technology (IT) sub-system which consumes energy, and electrical sub-system which supplies energy. The objective is to find an efficient trade-off between the power demand and power supply, respecting the operational requirements of both sub-systems (i.e., the requirements on utility, or monetary gain, which includes monetary revenue and monetary cost). First, we analyze the problem by a black-box approach. In this approach, the models of the two sub-systems are unknown to each other, and the two sub-systems negotiate by exchanging their power preferences. However, we found that the black-box approach cannot guarantee stable solutions in term of execution time and generational distance (which is the distance between a solution and the Pareto front). Then we introduce a semi black-box approach, in which the two sub-systems are modeled as the buyer and the supplier in a buyer–supplier negotiation game. We propose an algorithm that allows the buyer and supplier to negotiate, seeking for an efficient trade-off between the power demand and power supply. The analytical results show that the semi black-box algorithm converges to equilibrium, and these results are then confirmed by experimental results. We conduct the experiments by implementing a middleware of a datacenter powered by renewable energies. The experimental results show that the semi black-box algorithm improves significantly the stability, quality of service (QoS) and utility of the datacenter, compared to other algorithms. In term of stability, compared to the black-box algorithm, the semi black-box algorithm reduces the standard deviation of execution time and generational distance by 23 and 27 times, respectively. In term of QoS and utility, the semi black-box algorithm outperforms the algorithms that do not consider joint IT-energy management, as well as the algorithms that do not utilize a semi black-box design.

A repeated-negotiation game approach to distributed (re)scheduling of multiple projects using decoupled learning

With peer-to-peer software technologies based on Blockchain and Smart Contracts, automated negotiation of client-server relationships for enterprise networking and project-oriented fractal organizations can now be readily implemented. To this aim, the distributed (emergent) schedule of client-server contracts must be a Nash equilibrium from which any agent finds no incentive to deviate. Also, to respond effectively to unplanned events and disturbances, the renegotiating process of all concerned client-server contracts must pursue a new Nash equilibrium solution in the face of incomplete information by each individual agent. In this work, distributed multi-project (re)scheduling is formulated as a repeated-negotiation game in a multi-agent setting where each agent resorts to decoupled learning rules for deciding the terms and conditions in each contract settlement. After a finite number of stages of the negotiation game, a new emergent schedule close to a Nash equilibrium is found. An agent-based simulation framework is proposed to implement the repeated negotiation game based on bilateral client-server contracts. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated using a case study of a project-oriented fractal company in the pharmaceutical industry. Simulation results obtained highlight that repeated negotiations and decoupled learning are key for approaching a Nash equilibrium and welfare solutions to a (re)scheduling problem.