Preface

摘要

Recent years have witnessed a vast increase in the number, diversity, and complexity of electronic marketplaces. Such distributed electronic markets are frequently seen as an essential tool for efficient allocation of resources in a variety of fields, ranging from electronic commerce, financial markets, distributed supply chain management, to next-generation power grids or the allocation of user attention space in online advertising. The rapid growth in these areas has also led to increasing interest into developing tools for the efficient automation of market-based interactions. In some areas, such automation is already a reality. For example, most of the trading occurring in financial markets is performed by algorithmic strategies, and much of the advertising space on the Web is allocated by automated engines.