would like to maximize the sum of utilities (or minimize the sum of costs). A Nash equilibrium roughly corresponds to a local optimum of this problem, while we are looking for a global optimum. Partial cooperation There are some intermediate models in which the agents are partially-cooperative: they are willing to decrease their utility to help the global goal, but only if their own cost is not too high. An example of partially-cooperative agents are employees in a firm. On one hand, each employee wants to maximize their own utility; on the other hand, they also want to contribute to the success of the firm. Therefore, they are willing to help others or do some other time-consuming tasks that help the firm, as long as it is not too burdensome on them. Some models for partially-cooperative agents are: Guaranteed personal benefit: the agents agree to act for the global good if their own utility is at least as high as in the non-cooperative setting (i.e., the final outcome must be a Pareto improvement of the original state). Lambda-cooperation: there is a parameter . The agents agree to act for the global good if their own utility is at least as high as times their non-cooperative utility. Solving such partial-coopreation ADCOPs requires adaptations of ADCOP algorithms. See also Constraint satisfaction problem Distributed algorithm Distributed algorithmic mechanism design Notes and references Books and surveys A chapter in an edited book. See Chapters 1 and 2; downloadable free online. Mathematical optimization Constraint programming