Using Incentive Mechanisms for an Adaptive Regulation of Open Multi-Agent Systems

In this paper we propose a mechanism that encourages agents, participating in an open MAS, to follow a desirable behaviour, by introducing modifications in the environment. This mechanism is deployed by using an infrastructure based on institutional agents called incentivators. Each external agent is assigned to an incentivator that is able to discover its preferences, and to learn the suitable modifications in the environment, in order to improve the global utility of a system in response to inadequate design or changes in the population of participating agents. The mechanism is evaluated in a p2p scenario.