Simulating the Behaviour of Electronic MarketPlaces with an Agent-Based Approach

We forecast a future in which the global economy and the Internet will host a large number of interacting software agents. Most of them will be economically motivated, and will negotiate a variety of goods and services. It is therefore important to consider the economic incentives and behaviours of economic software agents, and to use all available means to anticipate their collective interactions. This paper addresses this concern by presenting a multi-agent market simulator designed for analysing agent market strategies based on a complete understanding of buyer and seller behaviours, preference models and pricing algorithms. The results of the negotiations between agents will be analysed by data mining tools in order to extract rules that will give the agents feedback to improve their strategies.