<#24#>Jeffrey O. Kephart, James E. Hanson, David W. Levine, Benjamin N. Grosof, Jakka Sairamesh, Richard B. Segal, and Steve R. White<#24#>
<#17#><#17#>
Our overall goal is to characterize and understand the dynamic behavior of information economies: very large open economies of automated information agents that are likely to come into existence on the Internet. Here we model a simple information-filtering economy in which broker agents sell selected articles to a subscribed set of consumers. Analysis and simulation of this model reveal the existence of both desirable and undesirable phenomena, and give some insight into their nature and the conditions under which they occur. In particular, efficient self-organization of the broker population into specialized niches can occur when communication and processing costs are neither too high nor too low, but endless price wars can undermine this desirable state of affairs.
<#36#>Submitted to<#36#>: Second International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents, at the Third International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems, Paris, July 4--7, 1998. <#38#>Version Date<#38#>: February 20, 1998. <#40#>Keywords<#40#>: economic agents, market-based control, information filtering, niche specialization, price wars. <#41#>Topic Phrase<#41#>: autonomous information agents in electronic markets. <#43#>Publication Notes<#43#>: A 2-page poster abstract of a somewhat related paper has been accepted to appear in the Proceedings of ICMAS'98.