Advances in automation for electronic commerce require improved understanding and formalization of the objects, processes, and policies of commerce itself. These include business objects such as bills of lading and contracts; processes such as workflows and trade procedures; and policies covering such problems as contract or procedure validation and strategic behaviour. This book is about theory, formalization, and proof-of-concept implementation of these and related matters. In addition to presenting state-of-the-art results, the book places this work in the context of nearly twenty years of developments in formal modelling for electronic commerce. A comprehensive bibliography and index are provided.

"Advances in automation for electronic commerce require improved understanding and formalization of the objects, processes, and policies of commerce itself. These include business objects such as bills of lading and contracts; processes such as workflows and trade procedures; and policies covering such problems as contract or procedure validation and strategic behaviour. This book is about theory, formalization, and proof-of-concept implementation of these and related matters. In addition to presenting state-of-the-art results, the book places this work in the context of nearly twenty years of developments in formal modelling for electronic commerce. A comprehensive bibliography and index are provided. TOC:Representation: Objects, Processes & Policies.- Applications.- Communication.- Agents and Strategic Interactions.- References and Index."

FMEC: Overview and Interpretation.- Policies.- Practical Contract Storage, Checking, and Enforcement for Business Process Automation.- Legitimacy Checking in Communicative Workflow Design.- CANDID Specification of Commercial and Financial Contracts: A Formal Semantics Approach to Knowledge Representation, Part I: Syntax & Formal Semantics of CANDID.- CANDID Specification of Commercial and Financial Contracts: A Formal Semantics Approach to Knowledge Representation, Part II: Formal Description of Economics Actors and Objects.- CANDID Specification of Commercial and Financial Contracts: A Formal Semantics Approach to Knowledge Representation, Part III: CANDID Specification of Financial Concepts.- Performatives, Performatives Everywhere but Not a Drop of Ink.- EDI, XML, and the Transparency Problem in Electronic Commerce.- Applications.- Designing Control Mechanisms for Value Exchanges in Network Organisations.- Sim-I-Space: An Agent-Based Modelling Approach to Knowledge Management Processes.- Communication.- On Representing Special Languages with FLBC: Message Markers and Reference Fixing in SeaSpeak.- A Note on Modelling Speech Acts as Signalling Conventions.- Dynamic Conversation Structures: An Extended Example.- Agents and Strategic Interactions.- Investigating the Value of Information and Computational Capabilities by Applying Genetic Programming to Supply Chain Management.- Multi-Agent Simulation of Financial Markets.- Adaptive Agents in Coalition Formation Games.- On Learning Negotiation Strategies by Artificial Adaptive Agents in Environments of Incomplete Information.- A Note on Strategic Learning in Policy Space.- Learning and Tacit Collusion by Artificial Agents in Cournot Duopoly Games.- A Note on Working Memory in Agent Learning.- Investigations of Granularityand Payoffs in 2×2 Games under Replicator Dynamics.