In this book we present a collection of papers around the topic of Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce. Most of the papers originate from the third workshop on Agent{Mediated Electronic Commerce held in conjunction with the Autonomous Agents conference in June 2000. After two previous workshops, one during the Autonomous Agents conference in 1998 in Minneapolis and the second one in conjunction with the International Joint Conference On Arti cial Intelligence in 1999, this workshop continued the tradition of the previous ones by setting the scene for the assessment of the challenges that Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce faces as well as the opportunities it creates. By focusing on age- mediated interactions, specialists from di erent disciplines were brought together who contribute theoretical and application perspectives in the narrowly focused topic that nevertheless involves wide ranging concerns such as: agent architec- res, institutionalization, economic theory, modeling, legal frameworks and policy guidelines. The main topics for the workshop were: { Electronic negotiation models for agents { Formal issues for agents that operate in electronic market places { Virtual trading institutions and platforms { Trading strategies for interrelated transactions (respectively auctions) The workshop received 12 submissions of which 7 were selected for publication in this volume. Although the number of submissions was less then expected for an important area like agent-mediated electronic commerce there is no reason to worry that this area does not get enough attention from the agent community.

Electronic Commerce, as a gamut of activities involving electronic transactions performed over a network via software that may be more or less autonomous, is an emerging reality. Strategic studies have shown that electronic commerce is a major growth industry. The book is devoted to the challenges and opportunities that electronic commerce opens for agent technology. For some time, electronic commerce has attracted the avid attention of agent-builders and agent technology researchers, and these have decisively contributed to advancing the state of the art in the field. The second-generation software agents now entering the scene hold great promise for the further advancement of electronic commerce. This book originates from a workshop on Agent-Mediated Electronic Trading held at Agents'98 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May 1998. The eleven carefully reviewed and revised papers present a unique survey of software agents in the context of electronic commerce.

It is now no longer necessary to argue the importance of agent technology. Be- des numerous conferences and workshops on speci c aspects of agent technology there are also many companies that are exploring its exploitation possibilities. In the light of these developments and in order to foster the transfer of agent technology from research labs to business, the EU has funded a \network of exc- lence" devoted to agent technology. This network of excellence, called AgentLink (http://www. agentlink. org/), aims at bringing together research groups from d- ferent countries and industrial developers. The ultimate goal is to create synergy among the di erent projects and groups to improve the competence of European industry and the excellence of academia. In order to achieve this goal, Agent- Link organises educational activities (summer schools), builds agent-related - terature repositories, and facilitates collaboration between member nodes. One of the main activities related to the last point are the regular meetings of \S- cial Interest Groups" (SIGs). At this moment six SIGs are functioning, focusing on topics ranging from agent based social simulation to intelligent agents for telecommunications applications and telematics. The current book combines two results from the activities of the SIG on \Agent Mediated Electronic Commerce". This SIG gathers the main research groups and industrial partners interested in the use of agent technology in el- tronic commerce. First and foremost the book contains a roadmap of research and current technological developments in the area of agent-mediated electronic commerce.

The Internet is spawning many new markets and electronic commerce is changing many market conventions. Not only are old commercial practices being adapted to the new conditions of immediacy brought forth by the global networks, but new products and services, as well as new practices, are beginning to appear. There is already ample evidence that agent-based technologies will be crucial for these - velopments. However many theoretical, technological, sociological, and legal - pects will need to be addressed before such opportunities become a significant reality. In addition to streamlining traditional transactions, agents enable new types of transactions. For example, the elusive one-to-one marketing becomes more of a - ality when consumer agents capture and share (or sell) consumer demographics. Prices and other transaction dimensions need no longer to be fixed; selling agents can dynamically tailor merchant offerings to each consumer. Economies of scale become feasible in new markets when agents negotiate on special arbitration c- tracts. Dynamic business relationships will give rise to more competitively agile organizations. It is these new opportunities combined with substantial reduction in transaction costs that will revolutionize electronic commerce.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce, AMEC 2006, held in New York, NY, USA in July 2004 as part of AAMAS 2004. The 15 revised full papers presented were carefully selected from 39 submissions during two rounds of reviewing and revision. The papers bring together novel work from such diverse fields as Computer Science, Operations Research, Artificial Intelligence and Distributed Systems that focus on modeling, implementation and evaluation of computational trading institution and/or agent strategies over a diverse set of goods. They are organized in topical sections on mechanism design, trading agents, and tools.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce, AMEC 2003, held in Melbourne, Australia in July 2003 as part of AAMAS 2003. The 9 revised full papers presented were carefully selected from 22 submissions during two rounds of reviewing and revision. The papers are organized in topical sections on automated negotiation, systems and mechanism design, and multi-agent markets.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce, AMEC 2002, held in Bologna, Italy in July 2002 during the AAMAS 2002 conference. The 20 revised full papers presented together with an introductory survey by the volume editors were carefully selected and improved during two rounds of reviewing and revision. The book gives a unique overview of the state of the art of designing mechanisms and systems for agent-mediated e-commerce- The papers are organized in topical sections on electronic auctions, negotiations, and electronic markets.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce, AMEC VII 2005, held in Utrecht, Netherlands in July 2005, as part of AAMAS 2005, and the third Workshop on Trading Agent Design and Analysis, TADA 2005, held in Edinburgh, UK in August 2005, in the course of the IJCAI 2005 conference meetings. The seven revised full AMEC 2005 papers presented were carefully selected.

This volume contains 12 thoroughly refereed and revised papers detailing recent advances in research on designing trading agents and mechanisms for agent-mediated e-commerce. They were originally presented at three events: the Workshop on Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce (AMEC 2013), co-located with AAMAS 2013 in Saint Paul, MN, USA, in May 2013; the Workshop on Trading Agent Design and Analysis (TADA 2013), co-located with AAAI 2013 in Bellevue, WA, USA, in July 2013; and the Joint Workshop on Trading Agent Design and Analysis (TADA 2014) and Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce (AMEC 2014), co-located with AAMAS 2014 in Paris, France, in May 2014. Given the breadth of research topics in this field, the range of topics addressed in these papers is correspondingly broad. These include the study of theoretical issues related to the design of interaction protocols and marketplaces; the design and analysis of automated trading strategies used by individual agents; and the deployment of such strategies, in times as part of an entry to the trading agent competition.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the joint International Workshops on Trading Agent Design and Analysis, TADA 2006, and on Agent Mediated Electronic Commerce, AMEC VIII 2006, held in Hakodate, Japan. The papers address a mix of both theoretical and practical issues in trading agent design and technologies, theoretical and empirical evaluation of strategies in complex trading scenarios as well as mechanism design.