A Note on Working Memory in Agent Learning

Fang Zhong ()
Additional contact information
Fang Zhong: Georgia Institute of Technology

A chapter in Formal Modelling in Electronic Commerce, 2005, pp 493-507 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract An important dimension of system and mechanism design, working memory, has been paid insufficient attention by scholars. Existing literature reports mixed findings on the effects of the amount of working memory on system efficiency. In this note, we investigate this relationship with a computational approach. We design an intelligent agent system in which three agents, one buyer and two bidders, play an Exchange Game repeatedly. The buyer agent decides whether to list a request for proposal, while the bidders bid for it independently. Only one bidder can win on a given round of play. Once the winning bidder is chosen by the buyer, a transaction takes place. The two parties of the trade can either cooperate or defect at this point. The decisions are made simultaneously and the payoffs essentially follow the Prisoner’s Dilemma game. We find that the relationship between working memory and the efficiency of the system has an inverted U-shape, i.e., there seems to be an optimal memory size. When we mixed agents with different memory sizes together, agents with the same amount of working memory generate the most efficient outcome in terms of total payoffs.

Keywords: Reinforcement Learning; Multiagent System; Memory Size; Total Surplus; Agent Learn (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ihichp:978-3-540-26989-2_20

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783540269892

DOI: 10.1007/3-540-26989-4_20

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in International Handbooks on Information Systems from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().