{"type":"ScholarlyArticle","title":"Shopbots and Pricebots","authors":[{"name":"Amy Greenwald","slug":"amy-greenwald","given":"Amy","family":"Greenwald","affiliation":""},{"name":"Jeffrey O. Kephart","slug":"jeffrey-o-kephart","given":"Jeffrey O.","family":"Kephart","affiliation":""}],"abstract":"Shopbots are agents that automatically search the Internet to obtain information about prices and other attributes of goods and services. They herald a future in which autonomous agents profoundly influence electronic markets. In this study, a simple economic model is proposed and analyzed, which is intended to quantify some of the likely impacts of a proliferation of shopbots and other economically-motivated software agents. In addition, this paper reports on simulations of pricebots - adaptive, pricesetting agents which firms may well implement to combat, or even take advantage of, the growing community of shopbots. This study forms part of a larger research program that aims to provide insights into the impact of agent technology on the nascent information economy.","doi":null,"url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1999/73","pdf":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1999/0073.pdf","markdown":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1999/73.md","bibtex":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1999/bibtex/73","volume":{"slug":"1999","title":"Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence","short_title":"IJCAI 1999","url":"https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1999/","year":1999,"location":"Stockholm, Sweden","dates":"","editors":"Thomas Dean","isbn":"","publisher":"International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence","doi_prefix":""},"section":"Distributed AI","track":"Distributed AI","number":73,"pages":{"first":506,"last":510},"keywords":[],"videos":[],"references":[],"license_note":"Copyright International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence."}