Reputation Description and Interpretation

<p>Reputation is an opinion held by others about a particular person, group, organisation, or resource. As a tool, reputation can be used to forecast the reliability of others based on their previous actions, moreover, in some domains it can even be used to estimate trustworthiness. Due to the large scale of virtual communities it is impossible to maintain a meaningful relationship with every member. Reputation systems are designed explicitly to manufacture trust within a virtual community by recording and sharing information regarding past interactions. Reputation systems are becoming increasingly popular and widespread, with the information generated varying considerably between domains. Currently, no formal method to exchange reputation information exists. However, the OpenRep framework, currently under development, is designed to federate reputation information, enabling the transparent exchange of information between reputation systems. This thesis presents a reputation description and interpretation system, designed as a foundation for the OpenRep framework. The description and interpretation system focuses on enabling the consistent and reliable expression and interpretation of reputation information across heterogeneous reputation systems. The description and interpretation system includes a strongly typed language, a verification system to validate usage of the language, and a XML based exchange protocol. In addition to these contributions, three case studies are presented as a means of generating requirements for the description and interpretation system, and evaluating the use of the proposed system in a federated reputation environment. The case studies include an electronic auction, virtual community and social network based relationship management service.</p>

Reputation Description and Interpretation

<p>Reputation is an opinion held by others about a particular person, group, organisation, or resource. As a tool, reputation can be used to forecast the reliability of others based on their previous actions, moreover, in some domains it can even be used to estimate trustworthiness. Due to the large scale of virtual communities it is impossible to maintain a meaningful relationship with every member. Reputation systems are designed explicitly to manufacture trust within a virtual community by recording and sharing information regarding past interactions. Reputation systems are becoming increasingly popular and widespread, with the information generated varying considerably between domains. Currently, no formal method to exchange reputation information exists. However, the OpenRep framework, currently under development, is designed to federate reputation information, enabling the transparent exchange of information between reputation systems. This thesis presents a reputation description and interpretation system, designed as a foundation for the OpenRep framework. The description and interpretation system focuses on enabling the consistent and reliable expression and interpretation of reputation information across heterogeneous reputation systems. The description and interpretation system includes a strongly typed language, a verification system to validate usage of the language, and a XML based exchange protocol. In addition to these contributions, three case studies are presented as a means of generating requirements for the description and interpretation system, and evaluating the use of the proposed system in a federated reputation environment. The case studies include an electronic auction, virtual community and social network based relationship management service.</p>

BA2P : Bidirectional and Anonymous Auction Protocol with Dispute-Freeness

Electronic auction is a popular platform to sell goods, task assignment, and resources’ allocation due to reductions of transaction costs and has attracted a huge number of potential buyers. However, it is challenging to address the disputes between the buyer and the auctioneer. The main reason is, on the one hand, solving such problem leverages to the broad domain of research aspects, such as economic theory, engineering, and cryptography, and, on the other hand, it is difficult to arbitrate in a decentralized and anonymous setting. In this work, we consider a more general framework to solve the potential disputes by enforcing bidirectional confirmation and public verification. Hence, the bidding procedure is clear to inspect and potential disputes can be erased. To achieve this goal, we propose policy-driven chameleon hash and revised linkable-and-redactable ring signature as building blocks. We used these two tools to build a bidirectional and anonymous auction protocol called BA 2 P. In our BA 2 P protocol, the bidders can competitively and anonymously place their bids to outbid others. At the end of the auction protocol, everyone can verify the validity of the bidding proof and decide the winner. Thus, dispute-freeness feature is achieved. The analysis suggests that our proposal is provably secure and practically efficient, and it trades some efficiencies with dispute-freeness feature.

Ocena skutków prawnych regulacji zawartej w rządowym projekcie ustawy o zmianie ustawy – Kodeks postępowania cywilnego oraz niektórych innych ustaw (druk sejmowy nr 899)

According to the author, creating the possibility of selling real estate by means of an electronic auction should be considered advisable and the direction of the adopted solutions should be generally assessed positively. Some of the proposed solutions need to be clarified or re-examined. Accepting the necessity of holding “remote” hearings and public sessions in a “distant” form, particularly during the state of epidemic danger or the state of epidemics, seems to be a correct solution. On the other hand the proposed regulations regarding the possibility of holding a closed hearing, are questionable. Changes concerning the possibility of communicating with the court by electronic means should, in principle, be considered desirable. However, the form of the proposed solutions – especially concerning electronic delivery – raises reservations.

Problems of procurement of medicines to ensure the activities of medical and sanitary units of the FPS of Russia

The article analyzes the situation with the procurement of medicines, carried out to support the activities of healthcare institutions of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia in 2019–2020. Based on the survey data, problems and main factors were identified that reduced the efficiency of procurement, an analysis of the causes of the current situation was carried out. Based on the results of the study, proposals were prepared to amend the current procedures governing the procurement of medicines. Key words: procurement of medicines, healthcare institutions of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia, legal regulation, the right to health, wholesale premium, electronic auction, competitive procurement.

Understanding Emotions in Electronic Auctions: Insights from Neurophysiology

The design of electronic auction platforms is an important field of electronic commerce research. It requires not only a profound understanding of the role of human cognition in human bidding behavior but also of the role of human affect. In this chapter, we focus specifically on the emotional aspects of human bidding behavior and the results of empirical studies that have employed neurophysiological measurements in this regard. By synthesizing the results of these studies, we are able to provide a coherent picture of the role of affective processes in human bidding behavior along four distinct theoretical pathways.

Opportunistic behavior in public bidding of agricultural products in IFSULDEMINAS - Campus Inconfidentes

abstract: This study is based on the theory of transaction costs (TCT) to analyze the opportunistic behavior of suppliers in public purchases of agricultural products provided by the private sector. We argue that among the public purchasing modalities, the electronic auction, although using the principles of the reverse English auction and considered as a market structure governance driven by price, presents opportunistic behavior at the time of bidding by the seller, until the closing of the contract with the buyer. We analyzed the differences in price quotations and the closing price of 20 agricultural products purchased in electronic auction of public bidding processes in comparison to the bid prices and of references between the years 2014 to 2017 in the Federal Institute Sul de Minas - Campus Inconfidentes. The results show that there was a discount in the biddings between the years 2014 and 2017, since the repetition of bids in electronic auction forced the reduction of prices by the suppliers. However, it was possible to note opportunism by some agents, in the items in which the public agency under study did not fully specify the bidding product.

A Fair and Secure Reverse Auction for Government Procurement

With the development of e-commerce, the electronic auction is attracting the attention of many people. Many Internet companies, such as eBay and Yahoo!, have launched online auction systems. Many researchers have studied the security problems of electronic auction systems, but few of them are multi-attribute-based. In 2014, Shi proposed a provable secure, sealed-bid, and multi-attribute auction protocol based on the semi-honest model. We evaluated this protocol and found that it has some design weaknesses and is vulnerable to the illegal operations of buyers, which results in unfairness. In this paper, we improved this protocol by replacing the Paillier’s cryptosystem with the elliptic curve discrete (ECC), and we designed a novel, online, and multi-attribute reverse-auction system using the semi-honest model. In our system, sellers’ identities are not revealed to the buyers, and the buyers cannot conduct illegal operations that may compromise the fairness of the auction.