Regulated Agent-Based Social Systems First International Workshop, RASTA 2002, Bologna, Italy, July 16, 2002, Revised Selected and Invited Papers

This book presents selected extended and reviewed versions of the papers accepted for the First International Workshop on Regulated Agent Systems: Theory and Applications, RASTA 2002, held in Bologna, Italy, in July 2002, as part of AAMAS 2002. In addition, several new papers on the workshop theme are included as well; these were submitted and reviewed in response to a further call for contributions.
The construction of artificial agent societies deals with questions and problems that are already known from human societies. The 16 papers in this book establish an interdisciplinary community of social scientists and computer scientists devoting their research interests to exploiting social theories for the construction and regulation of multi-agent systems.

Invited Paper.- How Formal Logic Can Fail to Be Useful for Modelling or Designing MAS.- Topic A: Social Theory for Agent Technology.- Communicational Patterns as Basis of Organizational Structures.- On How to Conduct Experimental Research with Self-Motivated Agents.- Cognitive Identity and Social Reflexivity of the Industrial District Firms. Going Beyond the “Complexity Effect” with Agent-Based Simulations.- The MAS-SOC Approach to Multi-agent Based Simulation.- Organisation Modelling for the Dynamics of Complex Biological Processes.- Communication without Agents? From Agent-Oriented to Communication-Oriented Modeling.- Modeling Product Awareness Rates and Market Shares.- Metanarratives and Believable Behavior of Autonomous Agents.- FORM – A Sociologically Founded Framework for Designing Self-Organization of Multiagent Systems.- Social Organization in a Software Agent Community with a Non-zero-Sum Game Interaction Model.- Emotion: Theoretical Investigations and Implications for Artificial Social Aggregates.- Topic B: Norms and Institutions in MAS.- What Is a Normative Goal?.- Searching for a Soulmate – Searching for Tag-Similar Partners Evolves and Supports Specialization in Groups.- Norms and Their Role in a Model of Electronic Institution.- A Model of Normative Multi-agent Systems and Dynamic Relationships.- Integration of Generic Motivations in Social Hybrid Agents.