Agoric Computing - Applying Market Forces to Computing (Getting Agents to Work?)

"For a variety of reasons, this work explores essentially pure markets as models of economic organization for computation, supported by a minimal "legal" framework of foundational constraints. A large body of economic theory and historical experience indicates that markets are, on the whole, remarkably effective in promoting efficient, cooperative interactions among entities with diverse knowledge, skills, and goals."

http://www.agorics.com/Library/agoricpapers/aos/aos.0.html

It has a rather full explanation of getting agents to work.

"The following argues that agents at a higher level can accomplish adaptive automatic data structure selection, guide sophisticated code transformation techniques, provide for competition among business agents, and maintain reputation information to guide competition."

http://www.agorics.com/Library/agoricpapers/aos/aos.5.html

Links to the papers:
http://www.agorics.com/Library/agoricpapers.html