Decision making cuts across most areas of intellectual enquiry and academic endeavor. The classical view of individual human thinkers choosing among options remains important and instructive, but the contributors to this volume broaden this perspective to characterize the decision making behavior of groups, non-human organisms and even non-living objects and mathematical constructs. A diverse array of methods is brought to bear-mathematical, computational, subjective, neurobiological, evolutionary, and cultural. We can often identify best or optimal decisions and decision making processes, but observed responses may deviate markedly from these, to a large extent because the environment in which decisions must be made is constantly changing. Moreover, decision making can be highly constrained by institutions, natural and social context, and capabilities. Studies of the mechanisms underlying decisions by humans and other organisms are just beginning to gain traction and shape our thinking. Though decision making has fundamental similarities across the diverse array of entities considered to be making them, there are large differences of degree (if not kind) that relate to the question of human uniqueness. From this survey of views and approaches, we converge on a tentative agenda for accelerating development of a new field that includes advancing the dialog between the sciences and the humanities, developing a defensible classification scheme for decision making and decision makers, addressing the role of morality and justice, and moving advances into applications-the rapidly developing field of decision support.

Decisions are made by individual humans-but also by corporations, plants, robots, and computer programs. The authors of this volume help initiate a powerful new comparative dimension for our analysis and application of decision making across an enormous range of intellectual enquiry.

Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) has been one of the fastest growing problem areas in many disciplines. The central problem is how to evaluate a set of alternatives in terms of a number of criteria. Although this problem is very relevant in practice, there are few methods available and their quality is hard to determine. Thus, the question `Which is the best method for a given problem?' has become one of the most important and challenging ones. This is exactly what this book has as its focus and why it is important. The author extensively compares, both theoretically and empirically, real-life MCDM issues and makes the reader aware of quite a number of surprising `abnormalities' with some of these methods. What makes this book so valuable and different is that even though the analyses are rigorous, the results can be understood even by the non-specialist. Audience: Researchers, practitioners, and students; it can be used as a textbook for senior undergraduate or graduate courses in business and engineering.

Economists, decision analysts, management scientists, and others have long argued that government should take a more scientific approach to decision making. Pointing to various theories for prescribing and rational izing choices, they have maintained that social goals could be achieved more effectively and at lower costs if government decisions were routinely subjected to analysis. Now, government policy makers are putting decision science to the test. Recent government actions encourage and in some cases require government decisions to be evaluated using formally defined principles 01' rationality. Will decision science pass tbis test? The answer depends on whether analysts can quickly and successfully translate their theories into practical approaches and whether these approaches promote the solution of the complex, highly uncertain, and politically sensitive problems that are of greatest concern to government decision makers. The future of decision science, perhaps even the nation's well-being, depends on the outcome. A major difficulty for the analysts who are being called upon by government to apply decision-aiding approaches is that decision science has not yet evolved a universally accepted methodology for analyzing social decisions involving risk. Numerous approaches have been proposed, including variations of cost-benefit analysis, decision analysis, and applied social welfare theory. Each of these, however, has its limitations and deficiencies and none has a proven track record for application to govern ment decisions involving risk. Cost-benefit approaches have been exten sively applied by the government, but most applications have been for decisions that were largely risk-free.

Every day, coalition cabinets make policy decisions critical to international politics. Juliet Kaarbo examines the dynamics of these multiparty cabinets in parliamentary democracies in order to assess both the quality of coalition decision making and the degree to which coalitions tend to favor peaceful or military solutions. Are coalition cabinets so riddled by conflict that they cannot make foreign policy effectively, or do the multiple voices represented in the cabinet create more legitimate and imaginative responses to the international system? Do political and institutional constraints inherent to coalition cabinets lead to nonaggressive policies? Or do institutional and political forces precipitate more belligerent behavior? Employing theory from security studies and political psychology as well as a combination of quantitative cross-national analyses and twelve qualitative comparative case studies of foreign policy made by coalition cabinets in Japan, the Netherlands, and Turkey, Kaarbo identifies the factors that generate highly aggressive policies, inconsistency, and other policy outcomes. Her findings have implications not merely for foreign policy but for all types of decision making and policy-making by coalition governments.

A practical guide to network meta-analysis with examples and code In the evaluation of healthcare, rigorous methods of quantitative assessment are necessary to establish which interventions are effective and cost-effective. Often a single study will not provide the answers and it is desirable to synthesise evidence from multiple sources, usually randomised controlled trials. This book takes an approach to evidence synthesis that is specifically intended for decision making when there are two or more treatment alternatives being evaluated, and assumes that the purpose of every synthesis is to answer the question "for this pre-identified population of patients, which treatment is 'best'?" A comprehensive, coherent framework for network meta-analysis (mixed treatment comparisons) is adopted and estimated using Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods implemented in the freely available software WinBUGS. Each chapter contains worked examples, exercises, solutions and code that may be adapted by readers to apply to their own analyses. This book can be used as an introduction to evidence synthesis and network meta-analysis, its key properties and policy implications. Examples and advanced methods are also presented for the more experienced reader. Methods used throughout this book can be applied consistently: model critique and checking for evidence consistency are emphasised. Methods are based on technical support documents produced for NICE Decision Support Unit, which support the NICE Methods of Technology Appraisal. Code presented is also the basis for the code used by the ISPOR Task Force on Indirect Comparisons. Includes extensive carefully worked examples, with thorough explanations of how to set out data for use in WinBUGS and how to interpret the output. Network Meta-Analysis for Decision Making will be of interest to decision makers, medical statisticians, health economists, and anyone involved in Health Technology Assessment including the pharmaceutical industry.

This volume comprises the select proceedings of the annual convention of the Computer Society of India. Divided into 10 topical volumes, the proceedings present papers on state-of-the-art research, surveys, and succinct reviews. The volumes cover diverse topics ranging from communications networks to big data analytics, and from system architecture to cyber security. This volume focuses on Nature Inspired Computing. The contents of this book will be useful to researchers and students alike.

Multicriteria analysis, or MCA, has been increasingly used in environmental decision-making to support the identification of suitable courses of action by integrating factual information with value-based information collected through stakeholder engagement. Multicriteria Analysis for Environmental Decision-Making provides an introduction to the key concepts of MCA and includes a series of case studies that illustrate the application of MCA to a variety of environmental decision-making problems ranging from protected area zoning to landfill siting, and from forest restoration to environmental impact assessment of tourism infrastructures. A compact reference that can be used by researchers, practitioners and planners/decision makers, Multicriteria Analysis for Environmental Decision-Making can also serve as a textbook for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in a broad range of curricula.

This book is dedicated to a fundamental conflict in modern states: those persons holding public office are no more than ordinary citizens. Therefore, their activities must – as a matter of principle – be subject to full judicial control. But at the same time, democratically legitimated politicians need some discretion in their decision-making. Allegations of politicians committing criminal offences in office quickly attract a great deal of media attention. Even politicians themselves frequently use such allegations to discredit their political opponents. However, to date this topic has not been fully addressed on an academic level. This book is a first step in this direction. The individual contributions cover topics such as: “bad” political decisions that result in a waste of taxpayers’ money corruption and conflicts of interest in political decision-making immunities and procedural obstacles to the effective prosecution of politicians abuse of criminal law and criminal proceedings in the political arena criminal liability for decisions taken in situations of state emergency the role of criminal law in public opinion. Leading experts examine these and other issues from a comparative perspective.

In the past decade there has been a worldwide evolution in evidence-based medicine that focuses on real-world Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) to compare the effects of one medical treatment versus another in real world settings. While most of this burgeoning literature has focused on research findings, data and methods, Howard Birnbaum and Paul Greenberg (both of Analysis Group) have edited a book that provides a practical guide to decision making using the results of analysis and interpretation of CER. Decision Making in a World of Comparative Effectiveness contains chapters by senior industry executives, key opinion leaders, accomplished researchers, and leading attorneys involved in resolving disputes in the life sciences industry. The book is aimed at 'users' and 'decision makers' involved in the life sciences industry rather than those doing the actual research. This book appeals to those who commission CER within the life sciences industry (pharmaceutical, biologic, and device manufacturers), government (both public and private payers), as well as decision makers of all levels, both in the US and globally.