This is truly an interdisciplinary book for knowledge workers in business, finance, management and socio-economic sciences based on fuzzy logic. It serves as a guide to and techniques for forecasting, decision making and evaluations in an environment involving uncertainty, vagueness, impression and subjectivity. Traditional modeling techniques, contrary to fuzzy logic, do not capture the nature of complex systems especially when humans are involved. Fuzzy logic uses human experience and judgement to facilitate plausible reasoning in order to reach a conclusion. Emphasis is on applications presented in the 27 case studies including Time Forecasting for Project Management, New Product Pricing, and Control of a Parasit-Pest System.

In today’s increasingly complex and uncertain business environment, financial analysis is yet more critical to business managers who tackle problems of an economic or business nature. Knowledge based on formal logic and even experience becomes less sufficient. This volume systematically sets out the basic elements on which to base financial analysis for business in the new century. It incorporates a previous work that can serve as the basis and foundation for the new contributions that are now being made in the field of financial economy and intend to provide business with instruments and models suitable for dealing with the new economic context. In dealing with rapid and unpredictable changes in technological and business conditions, it postulates a growing reliance on the opinions of experts instead of past data or probabilistic forecasts, which is a radical change but may yield fruitful results. For this reason, much emphasis is devoted to the problem of aggregation of the opinion of experts in the financial field, with the object of limiting, wherever possible, the subjective component of the opinions and making sure that the decisions have the best guarantee of reaching the desired objectives.

The rapid changes that have taken place globally on the economic, social and business fronts characterized the 20th century. The magnitude of these changes has formed an extremely complex and unpredictable decision-making framework, which is difficult to model through traditional approaches. The main purpose of this book is to present the most recent advances in the development of innovative techniques for managing the uncertainty that prevails in the global economic and management environments. These techniques originate mainly from fuzzy sets theory. However, the book also explores the integration of fuzzy sets with other decision support and modeling disciplines, such as multicriteria decision aid, neural networks, genetic algorithms, machine learning, chaos theory, etc. The presentation of the advances in these fields and their real world applications adds a new perspective to the broad fields of management science and economics. Contents: Decision Making, Management and Marketing: Algorithms for Orderly Structuring of Financial OC ObjectsOCO (J Gil-Aluja); A Fuzzy Goal Programming Model for Evaluating a Hospital Service Performance (M Arenas et al.); A Group Decision Making Method Using Fuzzy Triangular Numbers (J L Garc a-Lapresta et al.); Developing Sorting Models Using Preference Disaggregation Analysis: An Experimental Investigation (M Doumpos & C Zopounidis); Stock Markets and Portfolio Management: The Causality Between Interest Rate, Exchange Rate and Stock Price in Emerging Markets: The Case of the Jakarta Stock Exchange (J Gupta et al.); Fuzzy Cognitive Maps in Stock Market (D Koulouriotis et al.); Neural Network vs Linear Models of Stock Returns: An Application to the UK and German Stock Market Indices (A Kanas); Corporate Finance and Banking Management: Expertons and Behaviour of Companies with Regard to the Adequacy Between Business Decisions and Objectives (A Couturier & B Fioleau); Multiple Fuzzy IRR in the Financial Decision Environment (S F Gonzilez et al.); An Automated Knowledge Generation Approach for Managing Credit Scoring Problems (M Michalopoulos et al.); and other papers. Readership: Financial managers, economists, management scientists and computer scientists."

Fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic are powerful mathematical tools for modeling and controlling uncertain systems in industry, humanity, and nature; they are facilitators for approximate reasoning in decision making in the absence of complete and precise information. Their role is significant when applied to complex phenomena not easily described by traditional mathematics.The unique feature of the book is twofold: 1) It is the first introductory course (with examples and exercises) which brings in a systematic way fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic into the educational university and college system. 2) It is designed to serve as a basic text for introducing engineers and scientists from various fields to the theory of fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic, thus enabling them to initiate projects and make applications.

Experts from the world's major financial institutions contributed to this work and have already used the newest technologies. Gives proven strategies for using neural networks, algorithms, fuzzy logic and nonlinear data analysis techniques to enhance profitability. The latest analytical breakthroughs, the impact on modern finance theory and practice, including the best ways for profitably applying them to any trading and portfolio management system, are all covered.

This book shows how the application of fuzzy logic can benefit management, group decision making, strategic planning, supply chain management and other business imperatives. The theoretical analysis is fully supported by real-life case studies. The book develops themes that businesses can use to master effectiveness and quality, work with flexibility, and support continuous learning in the organization and the individual.

Fuzzy Sets in the Management of Uncertainty presents an overview of current problems in business management, primarily for those situations involving decision making of an economic-financial nature. The monograph therefore discusses problems of planning, programming, control and brings light to the entire financial network in its three phases: raising funds, analysis and investment. Special attention is paid to production processes and marketing of products and services. This monograph is a highly readable overview and introduction for scientists, professionals, graduate students, managers and consultants in the growing field of applications and fuzzy logic in the field of management.

This book takes recent theoretical advances in Finance and Economics and shows how they can be implemented in the real world. It presents tactics for using mathematical and simulation models to solve complex tasks of forecasting income, valuing businesses, predicting retail sales, and evaluating markets and tax and regulatory problems. Busine

Mathematical Modeling using Fuzzy Logic has been a dream project for the author. Fuzzy logic provides a unique method of approximate reasoning in an imperfect world. This text is a bridge to the principles of fuzzy logic through an application-focused approach to selected topics in engineering and management. The many examples point to the richer solutions obtained through fuzzy logic and to the possibilities of much wider applications. There are relatively very few texts available at present in fuzzy logic applications. The style and content of this text is complementary to those already available. New areas of application, like application of fuzzy logic in modeling of sustainability, are presented in a graded approach in which the underlying concepts are first described. The text is broadly divided into two parts: the first treats processes, materials, and system applications related to fuzzy logic, and the second delves into the modeling of sustainability with the help of fuzzy logic. This book offers comprehensive coverage of the most essential topics, including: Treating processes, materials, system applications related to fuzzy logic Highlighting new areas of application of fuzzy logic Identifying possibilities of much wider applications of fuzzy logic Modeling of sustainability with the help of fuzzy logic The level enables a selection of the text to be made for the substance of undergraduate-, graduate-, and postgraduate-level courses. There is also sufficient volume and quality for the basis of a postgraduate course. A more restricted and judicious selection can provide the material for a professional short course and various university-level courses.