{"paper":{"title":"When Agent Markets Arrive","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"Agent markets generate 3.2 times the wealth of isolated agents, but common institutional choices can reduce those gains.","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"cs.CE","authors_text":"Haojian Jin, Haoyang Shang, Xuan Liu","submitted_at":"2026-04-08T05:06:53Z","abstract_excerpt":"AI agents are increasingly transacting on behalf of users -- delegating tasks, spending budgets, and negotiating with unfamiliar counterparties. Unlike human marketplaces, which operate under institutional designs refined over centuries, the rules governing emerging agent marketplaces are being built ad-hoc, and early choices tend to lock in. Understanding what dynamics these rules produce is urgent. We present diagon, a programmable market system serving as a rule-agnostic experimental testbed for institutional design in emerging agent cognitive-labour markets. diagon makes institutional choi"},"claims":{"count":4,"items":[{"kind":"strongest_claim","text":"market exchange generates 3.2× the wealth of self-sufficient agents, but these gains depend strongly on institutional structure; for example, interventions such as identity transparency and stronger competitive selection can degrade market performance rather than improve it.","source":"verdict.strongest_claim","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C1","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"weakest_assumption","text":"The heterogeneous tool-using agents and their decision rules in the DIAGON simulation are sufficiently representative of the behaviors that will appear in deployed agent cognitive-labour markets.","source":"verdict.weakest_assumption","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C2","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"one_line_summary","text":"DIAGON simulation shows agent markets produce 3.2 times more wealth than isolated agents, but institutional choices like transparency and competitive selection can reduce rather than increase performance.","source":"verdict.one_line_summary","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C3","attestation":"unclaimed"},{"kind":"headline","text":"Agent markets generate 3.2 times the wealth of isolated agents, but common institutional choices can reduce those gains.","source":"verdict.pith_extraction.headline","status":"machine_extracted","claim_id":"C4","attestation":"unclaimed"}],"snapshot_sha256":"fadf6b08a1a189457d89ed2ab5fe96f29b3d9aff377717851b5b796443783bb1"},"source":{"id":"2604.06688","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":"e087280f-7f1d-469e-9c3f-b3b07626bb66","model_set":{"reader":"grok-4.3"},"created_at":"2026-05-10T18:04:29.397337Z","strongest_claim":"market exchange generates 3.2× the wealth of self-sufficient agents, but these gains depend strongly on institutional structure; for example, interventions such as identity transparency and stronger competitive selection can degrade market performance rather than improve it.","one_line_summary":"DIAGON simulation shows agent markets produce 3.2 times more wealth than isolated agents, but institutional choices like transparency and competitive selection can reduce rather than increase performance.","pipeline_version":"pith-pipeline@v0.9.0","weakest_assumption":"The heterogeneous tool-using agents and their decision rules in the DIAGON simulation are sufficiently representative of the behaviors that will appear in deployed agent cognitive-labour markets.","pith_extraction_headline":"Agent markets generate 3.2 times the wealth of isolated agents, but common institutional choices can reduce those gains."},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2604.06688/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":2,"snapshot_sha256":"d4bb7e2a5744a8df8637a1663c3f19d31494dd96f30dda3010e7db8881133ad0"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}