The allocation of resources within a system of autonomous agents, that not only have preferences over alternative allocations of resources but also actively participate in computing an allocation, is an exciting area of research at the interface of Computer Science and Economics. This tutorial will cover some of the most salient issues in Multiagent Resource Allocation.
We are going to review various languages to represent the preferences of individual agents over alternative allocations of resources, as well as different measures of social welfare to assess the overall quality of an allocation. We are also going to discuss pertinent issues regarding allocation procedures and present important complexity results. The tutorial will emphasise two important themes in Multiagent Resource Allocation: (1) properties of distributed negotiation schemes (as opposed to the centralised approach taken in recent work on combinatorial auctions); and (2) the consideration of fair division issues in multiagent systems research. This tutorial is based on the work of the AgentLink Technical Forum Group on Multiagent Resource Allocation (TFG-MARA).