46, Contract Types for Satisficing Task Allocation: I Theoretical Results

Classification of contract types below taken from 'Contract Types for Satisficing Task Allocation: I Theoretical Results' (1998) by Tuoumas W. Sandholm. Very very important/related paper to keep referring back to. Will need to realise the OCSM-contract to achieve completeness in my work.

O-contract: one task given by an agent i to an agent j (+ contract price i pays to j for handling the task set).

C-contract: a cluster (more than 1) of tasks given by an agent i to an agent j (+ contract price i pays to j for handling the task set).

S-contract: swaps of tasks where agent i subcontracts a (single) task to agent j and vice-versa (+ amount i pays to j and amount j pays to i).

M-contract: A multi-agent contract involving at least three agents, wherein each agent involved gives away a single resource to another agent (+ payment).

Each contract type above is necessary (and avoids some of the local optima that the other three do not) but is not sufficient in and of itself for reaching the global optimum via "individually rational" contracts.

OCSM-contract: combines/merges characteristics of the above contract types into one contract type - where the ideas of the above four contract types can be applied simultaneously (atomically).