This volume provides a selection of strictly refereed papers first presented during a workshop held within the context of the ESPRIT ModelAge Project in Certosa di Pertignano, Italy, in 1997.The 15 revised full papers presented together with an introductory survey by the volume editors were carefully reviewed for inclusion in the book. The book is devoted to the interdisciplinary study of formal models of agency and intelligent agents from the points of view of artificial intelligence, software engineering, applied logic, databases, and organization theory. Among the topics addressed are various types of agents and multi-agent systems, cooperation, communication, specification, verification, deontic logic, diagnosis, and decision making.
