B2B Negotiation Support: The Need for a Communication Perspective

Negotiation support is an important challenge for business-to-business e-commerce that is still poorly supported in current information systems. One reason is that negotiation processes are much harder to formalize than the business processes in the fulfilment phase. The goal of this paper is to provide the basis for a formal analysis of different types of electronic negotiations which can help developers of future negotiation support systems. The analysis is performed from a communication perspective, in particular, Habermas' theory of communicative action. Using this perspective, a distinction can be made between norm-oriented, goal-oriented and document-based negotiation. Whereas traditional modeling methods take a data-oriented view, the theory of communicative action supports a communication-oriented view that provides more insight in the logic of negotiation processes. The analysis forms the basis for the negotiation support prototype implemented within the ESPRIT project MeMo (Mediating and Monitoring Electronic Commerce) which was aimed at B2B e-commerce for SMEs in Europe.     

General competetive equilibrium of the spatial economy

The spatial economy is analyzed in the general equilibrium framework by considering the production and the utility functions depending on spatial distribution and sets. The geometric constraint between the location and the extension of goods supplies the equilibrium condition for space. The existence of an equilibrium is demonstrated by extending the Gale-Nikaido theorem to the case under examination. Consequently, the competetive equilibrium exists, under the assumptions of the theorem, although each point of space is heterogeneous with any other point (because of the different location): the existence is allowed by the perfect partibility of space.     

Do Article 22 exemptions adequately stimulate investments in European gas markets?

Stimulating investments whilst introducing competition is a major policy issue for European gas markets. The current Article 22 exemptions regime, which is an application to the gas market of the access holiday theory, is designed to address this issue. Though useful, the access holiday theory provides an incomplete picture. In order to adequately analyze the exemptions regime, this paper incorporates the real options theory of investments into the analysis. Combining both theories provides the properties of an exemptions regime that better stimulates investments in gas. The current exemptions regime has some shortcomings, in particular regarding its risk criterion. A better exemptions regime would grant less exemptions, but if it does, allows higher profits during the exemption. Revised version of a paper presented at the European Doctoral Seminar on Natural Gas, State University, Moscow, November 24, 2007. I would like to thank the participants, especially Martin Gilman and Franz Hubert, as well as Koen Caminada, Ben van Velthoven and a referee of this journal for their comments and suggestions.     

Equilibria in large games with continuous procedures

We study existence of equilibria in large games where players use boundedly rational procedures. The equilibria are different from Nash equilibria; the difference persists even when players use procedures for which the observations gathered in any period are used to evaluate the payoff from different actions.     

Preference for flexibility in infinite horizon problems

Summary. We consider the extension of the classical problem of preference for flexibility to many periods. Preferences are defined over sets of infinite paths of choices. The main result provides a set of axioms on preferences that yield an additive representation over a subjective state space. This space is the set of preferences over choice today and feasible set tomorrow. The main new axiom, stochastic dominance, is a stronger form of the assumption of monotonicity. Received: September 11 2000; revised version: December 18, 2001     

Growth in economies with non convexities: sunspots and lottery equilibria

Summary. We investigate the relation between lotteries and sunspot allocations in a dynamic economy where the utility functions are not concave. In an intertemporal competitive economy, the household consumption set is identified with the set of lotteries, while in the intertemporal sunspot economy it is the set of measurable allocations in the given probability space of sunspots. Sunspot intertemporal equilibria whenever they exist are efficient, independently of the sunspot space specification. If feasibility is, at each point in time, a restriction over the average value of the lotteries, competitive equilibrium prices are linear in basic commodities and intertemporal sunspot and competitive equilibria are equivalent. Two models have this feature: Large economies and economies with semi-linear technologies. We provide examples showing that in general, intertemporal competitive equilibrium prices are non-linear in basic commodities and, hence, intertemporal sunspot equilibria do not exist. The competitive static equilibrium allocations are stationary, intertemporal equilibrium allocations, but the static sunspot equilibria need not to be stationary, intertemporal sunspot equilibria. We construct examples of non-convex economies with indeterminate and Pareto ranked static sunspot equilibrium allocations associated to distinct specifications of the sunspot probability space.Received: 25 August 2003, Revised: 16 March 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D84, D90.Correspondence to: Paolo SiconolfiWe thank Herakles Polemarchakis for helpful conversations on the topic. The research of Aldo Rustichini was supported by the NSF grant NSF/SES-0136556.