Multi-Agent Systems for Education and Interactive Entertainment: Design, Use and Experience presents readers with a rich collection of ideas from researchers who are exploring the complex tradeoffs that must be made in designing agent systems for education and interactive entertainment. This book aims to provide a mixture of relevant theoretical and practical understanding of the use of multi-agent systems in educational and entertainment research, together with practical examples of the use of such systems in real application scenarios.

Agents are computational systems that are capable of autonomous, reactive and proactive behaviour, and are also able to interact with each other. The application of agents in e-Commerce is one of the fastest-growing and most exciting areas of computer science. This emerging technology is enabling individuals and businesses to take advantage of the new and powerful medium of the World Wide Web.

"Agent Technology for e-Commerce" introduces the main theory behind and the applications of agent technology in e-Commerce in a way that is accessible to students with a basic background in computer science. Bringing together economics, game theory and multi-agent systems in a clear and accessible way, this book offers an introduction to agent technology and architectures, as well as providing more in-depth coverage of subjects such as negotiation, auctions, bargaining, voting protocols and coalition formation. Mobile agents and issues of trust and security are also addressed.

Containing exercises and topics for discussion, this book is ideal for classroom use or self-study, and will be of considerable interest to computing and IT professionals who wish explore the fast-moving discipline of agent technology for e-Commerce.

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.