Title: Decentralized method for computing Pareto solutions in multi-party negotiations
Authors: Pirja Heiskanen, Helsinki University of Technology
Date: March 1998
Status: Systems Analysis Laboratory Working Paper

This paper proposes a decentralized method for computing Pareto-optimal solutions in multi-party negotiations over continuous issues.

The method is based on the well known weighting method which is decomposed by introducing an own decision variable for each decision maker and by applying the dual decomposition method to the resulting problem. The method offers a systematic way for generating some or all Pareto-optimal solutions so that the decision makers do not have to know each others' value functions. Under the assumption of quasilinear value function the requirement that a decision maker knows the explicit form for his value function can be relaxed. In that case the decision maker is asked to solve a serie of multiobjective programming problems where an additional artificial decision variable is introduced.

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