ITrust workshop Glasgow 2-4 Sep 2002

bullet1 Zoran Milosevic

bullet2 Contract

Voluntary agreement between parties


bullet3 Business issues

Purpose of contract is to...

Efficiency-seeking behaviour

Minimize transaction costs

Contract optimization

Different kinds of contracts ...

Game theory

"Principal-agent" problem:  principal wishes to hire an agent...





  • Question   How is this different from designing a good Poker playing program?
     

bullet3 Legal issues

  • Alleviate mistrust
    Purpose of contract is to...

    alleviate mistrust


     

bullet3 Business perspective

  • Interesting   Validity
    Clarity

    Consideration (something of value)

    Competence

    Legality of purpose

    (need to worry about this to mirror real world)


     
  • Monitoring and enforcement
    Divergence of reality and expectations


     

bullet3 Question   Question about what kind (scale) of contract?

Many kinds -- one solution to cover all, tailored to specific cases? -- architectural approach

bullet3 Question This is good   Contract or relationship?

Which of these is important?

(Hmm... maybe our work is to make non-relationship contracts more efficient?)