One of the reasons could be that you are working on an unsupported version of MDM.
MDM Administration Agent is supported from MDM 8.3.1 HF1. If you have not applied any hotfix on top of MDM 8.3.1 you may face this issue.
Apply hotfix1.If the hotfix level is correct the following are worth checking:
1). In the mdm-agent.properties, check for the following properties:
a). tea.server.url=http://localhost:8777/tea
b). mdmserver.mqhome=C:/tibco/mdm/8.3
2). Check that the Java_HOME and classpath are set in the startMDMAgent.sh/bat file:
set PATH=C:\Java7\bin;%PATH%
export CLASSPATH=C:/tibco/mdm-agent/1.0/lib/lib/mdm-agent.jar;%CLASSPATH%
3). Check that the cluster-config.xml in MQ_HOME/config folder is set:
<member>
<name>Member1</name>
<serverUrl>http://localhost:8080</serverUrl>
<startCmd>C:/jboss7/bin/standalone.bat</startCmd>
<shutdownCmd>C:/jboss7/bin/jboss-cli.sh --connect --command=:shutdown</shutdownCmd>
</member>