Trading Agents in Electronic Markets

The growth and integration of worldwide markets, and the ongoing transition to online trading, creates both opportunities and problems. The opportunities are obvious - larger markets create economies of scale and can increase seller revenues, while the increased competition reduces margins and presents buyers with many more choices. At the same time, online business expectations reduce decision timelines. The result is that business decision makers are faced with nearly unsolvable combinatorial problems on a regular basis.

This talk will focus on the theoretical and practical aspects of trading agents - software systems designed to interact directly or indirectly with buyers and sellers in ways that maximize business value. We'll discuss what we know and what we don't know, along with theoretical and technical limitations. Examples will be drawn from both deployed systems and from abstract trading environments, such as TAC SCM, that serve as testbeds for improving our understanding of dynamic trading scenarios. Along the way, we will identify examples of practical, real-world applications of what we've learned by studying trading agents and electronic markets.