Abstract

The general importance of negotiations and bargaining as means of decision making has given rise to considerable research within two broad paradigms. The behavioral paradigm has attempted to discover rationality in specific situations in order to generalize. The formal paradigm has assumed a general rationality which could be applied to specific problems. This strict dichotomy imposes unnecessary restrictions on the use of formal approaches to structure, represent, and support negotiators. Logic-based approaches, such as rule-based formalism, make it possible to blend unique and specific aspects of a problem, with general reasoning mechanisms and rationality postulates. This paper introduces rule-based formalism and discusses its advantages and disadvantages. It attempts to present its ability to represent complex decision processes and to reason using formal structures. The approach is illustrated with several simple examples.