Prevention of resource trading fraud in manufacturing grid: a signalling games approach

Abstract

In the manufacturing grid resource market, the information asymmetry for buyers and sellers is a common situation. With resource information superiority, some resource service providers (RSPs, sellers) often make the pooling equilibrium, so that resource service demanders (RSDs, buyers) cannot recognise high-quality resources owing to imperfect information. Hence, the authors propose a signalling games approach to prevent resource trading fraud in the manufacturing grid. In support of the architecture of resource negotiation and trading, RSDs can get more accurate information about resource quality based on the collateral currency promised by RSPs. In this way, RSDs can more accurately identify resource quality. This method focuses on preventing low-quality RSPs from sending out an incorrect signal suggesting high resource quality to entice RSDs to purchase the low-quality resource. Simulation results indicate that the game theoretical model has a reasonable and perfect Bayesian separating equilibrium, from which RSPs do not initiatively deviate.

Keywords:

• manufacturing grid
• singling games
• the perfect Bayesian equilibrium
• trading fraud

Acknowledgements

This paper is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation Key Project of China: Digit manufacturing basic theories and key techniques under network environment (NO.50335020), and the Hubei Digital Manufacturing Key Laboratory Opening Fund project: Research on resource service search and optimal-selection theories and experiments in manufacturing grid system (No. SZ0621). The authors thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions which helped to improve the paper.