Magentic Marketplace: An Open-Source Environment for Studying Agentic Markets

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Bansal, Gagan, Hua, Wenyue, Huang, Zezhou, Fourney, Adam, Swearngin, Amanda, Epperson, Will, Payne, Tyler, Hofman, Jake M., Lucier, Brendan, Singh, Chinmay, Mobius, Markus, Nambi, Akshay, Yadav, Archana, Gao, Kevin, Rothschild, David M., Slivkins, Aleksandrs, Goldstein, Daniel G., Mozannar, Hussein, Immorlica, Nicole, Murad, Maya, Vogel, Matthew, Kambhampati, Subbarao, Horvitz, Eric, Amershi, Saleema
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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_version_ 1866914123511496704
author Bansal, Gagan
Hua, Wenyue
Huang, Zezhou
Fourney, Adam
Swearngin, Amanda
Epperson, Will
Payne, Tyler
Hofman, Jake M.
Lucier, Brendan
Singh, Chinmay
Mobius, Markus
Nambi, Akshay
Yadav, Archana
Gao, Kevin
Rothschild, David M.
Slivkins, Aleksandrs
Goldstein, Daniel G.
Mozannar, Hussein
Immorlica, Nicole
Murad, Maya
Vogel, Matthew
Kambhampati, Subbarao
Horvitz, Eric
Amershi, Saleema
author_facet Bansal, Gagan
Hua, Wenyue
Huang, Zezhou
Fourney, Adam
Swearngin, Amanda
Epperson, Will
Payne, Tyler
Hofman, Jake M.
Lucier, Brendan
Singh, Chinmay
Mobius, Markus
Nambi, Akshay
Yadav, Archana
Gao, Kevin
Rothschild, David M.
Slivkins, Aleksandrs
Goldstein, Daniel G.
Mozannar, Hussein
Immorlica, Nicole
Murad, Maya
Vogel, Matthew
Kambhampati, Subbarao
Horvitz, Eric
Amershi, Saleema
contents As LLM agents advance, they are increasingly mediating economic decisions, ranging from product discovery to transactions, on behalf of users. Such applications promise benefits but also raise many questions about agent accountability and value for users. Addressing these questions requires understanding how agents behave in realistic market conditions. However, previous research has largely evaluated agents in constrained settings, such as single-task marketplaces (e.g., negotiation) or structured two-agent interactions. Real-world markets are fundamentally different: they require agents to handle diverse economic activities and coordinate within large, dynamic ecosystems where multiple agents with opaque behaviors may engage in open-ended dialogues. To bridge this gap, we investigate two-sided agentic marketplaces where Assistant agents represent consumers and Service agents represent competing businesses. To study these interactions safely, we develop Magentic-Marketplace -- a simulated environment where Assistants and Services can operate. This environment enables us to study key market dynamics: the utility agents achieve, behavioral biases, vulnerability to manipulation, and how search mechanisms shape market outcomes. Our experiments show that frontier models can approach optimal welfare -- but only under ideal search conditions. Performance degrades sharply with scale, and all models exhibit severe first-proposal bias, creating 10-30x advantages for response speed over quality. These findings reveal how behaviors emerge across market conditions, informing the design of fair and efficient agentic marketplaces.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_25779
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Magentic Marketplace: An Open-Source Environment for Studying Agentic Markets
Bansal, Gagan
Hua, Wenyue
Huang, Zezhou
Fourney, Adam
Swearngin, Amanda
Epperson, Will
Payne, Tyler
Hofman, Jake M.
Lucier, Brendan
Singh, Chinmay
Mobius, Markus
Nambi, Akshay
Yadav, Archana
Gao, Kevin
Rothschild, David M.
Slivkins, Aleksandrs
Goldstein, Daniel G.
Mozannar, Hussein
Immorlica, Nicole
Murad, Maya
Vogel, Matthew
Kambhampati, Subbarao
Horvitz, Eric
Amershi, Saleema
Multiagent Systems
Artificial Intelligence
As LLM agents advance, they are increasingly mediating economic decisions, ranging from product discovery to transactions, on behalf of users. Such applications promise benefits but also raise many questions about agent accountability and value for users. Addressing these questions requires understanding how agents behave in realistic market conditions. However, previous research has largely evaluated agents in constrained settings, such as single-task marketplaces (e.g., negotiation) or structured two-agent interactions. Real-world markets are fundamentally different: they require agents to handle diverse economic activities and coordinate within large, dynamic ecosystems where multiple agents with opaque behaviors may engage in open-ended dialogues. To bridge this gap, we investigate two-sided agentic marketplaces where Assistant agents represent consumers and Service agents represent competing businesses. To study these interactions safely, we develop Magentic-Marketplace -- a simulated environment where Assistants and Services can operate. This environment enables us to study key market dynamics: the utility agents achieve, behavioral biases, vulnerability to manipulation, and how search mechanisms shape market outcomes. Our experiments show that frontier models can approach optimal welfare -- but only under ideal search conditions. Performance degrades sharply with scale, and all models exhibit severe first-proposal bias, creating 10-30x advantages for response speed over quality. These findings reveal how behaviors emerge across market conditions, informing the design of fair and efficient agentic marketplaces.
title Magentic Marketplace: An Open-Source Environment for Studying Agentic Markets
topic Multiagent Systems
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.25779