This Special Issue covers symmetry and asymmetry phenomena occurring in real-life problems. We invited authors to submit their theoretical or experimental research presenting engineering and economic problem solution models dealing with the symmetry or asymmetry of different types of information. The issue gained interest in the research community and received many submissions. After rigorous scientific evaluation by editors and reviewers, nine papers were accepted and published. The authors proposed different MADM and MODM solution models as integrated tools to find a balance between the components of sustainable global development, to find a symmetry axis concerning goals, risks, and constraints to cope with the complicated problems. Most approaches suggested decision models under uncertainty, combining the usual decision-making methods with interval-valued fuzzy or rough sets theory, also Z numbers. The application fields of the proposed models involved both problems of technological sciences and social sciences. The papers cover three essential areas: engineering, economy, and management. We hope that a summary of the Special Issue as provided here will encourage a detailed analysis of the papers included in the Printed Edition.

This accessible text provides an insight into the growing global trend of crowdfunding as a source of entrepreneurial finance. Grounded in academic literature, this book looks at the micro and macro issues within crowdfunding, from the entrepreneur’s access to finance at the business level, to the role of government in regulating the market. It helps the reader develop a sound understanding of crowdfunding as a source of finance, the crowdfunding process and potential options when faced with start-up funding issues. A range of international case studies of successful and unsuccessful crowdfunding campaigns help readers to apply theory to real-life scenarios. Readers are also supported throughout the book with chapter objectives and summaries, key terms, discussion questions and further reading guidance. Instructor materials such as slides and test questions are available as digital supplements. Crowdfunding and Entrepreneurship will be a valuable resource for students of new venture creation and entrepreneurial finance, as well as entrepreneurs exploring crowdfunding as an option for business development.

Information management is a common paradigm in modern decision-making. A wide range of decision-making techniques have been proposed in the literature to model complex business and engineering processes. In this Special Issue, 16 selected and peer-reviewed original research articles contribute to business information management in various current real-world problems by proposing crisp or uncertain multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) models and techniques, mostly including multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) approaches, in addition to a single paper proposing an interactive multi-objective decision-making (MODM) approach. Particular attention is devoted to information aggregation operators—65% of papers dealt with this item. The topics of this Special Issue gained attention in Europe and Asia. A total of 48 authors from seven countries contributed to this Issue. The papers are mainly concentrated in three application areas: supplier selection and rational order allocation, the evaluation and selection of goods or facilities, and personnel selection/partner selection. A number of new approaches are proposed that are expected to attract great interest from the research community.

Optimization is considered as a decision-making process for getting the most out of available resources for the best attainable results. Many real-world problems are multi-objective or multi-attribute problems that naturally involve several competing objectives that need to be optimized simultaneously, while respecting some constraints or involving selection among feasible discrete alternatives. In this Reprint of the Special Issue, 19 research papers co-authored by 88 researchers from 14 different countries explore aspects of multi-objective or multi-attribute modeling and optimization in crisp or uncertain environments by suggesting multiple-attribute decision-making (MADM) and multi-objective decision-making (MODM) approaches. The papers elaborate upon the approaches of state-of-the-art case studies in selected areas of applications related to sustainable development decision aiding in engineering and management, including construction, transportation, infrastructure development, production, and organization management.

This Special Issue covers symmetry and asymmetry phenomena occurring in real-life problems. We invited authors to submit their theoretical or experimental research presenting engineering and economic problem solution models dealing with the symmetry or asymmetry of different types of information. The issue gained interest in the research community and received many submissions. After rigorous scientific evaluation by editors and reviewers, nine papers were accepted and published. The authors proposed different MADM and MODM solution models as integrated tools to find a balance between the components of sustainable global development, to find a symmetry axis concerning goals, risks, and constraints to cope with the complicated problems. Most approaches suggested decision models under uncertainty, combining the usual decision-making methods with interval-valued fuzzy or rough sets theory, also Z numbers. The application fields of the proposed models involved both problems of technological sciences and social sciences. The papers cover three essential areas: engineering, economy, and management. We hope that a summary of the Special Issue as provided here will encourage a detailed analysis of the papers included in the Printed Edition.

In a single volume, this book treats the theoretical, empirical, and case studies approaches to the implementation of monetary reforms and discusses specific countries' experiences with these approaches. The analyses are not restricted to central bank or exchange rate reforms, but consider all the principal tools of monetary reforms in this volume. The first section surveys and examines the types of monetary reforms. The second and third sections examine the pros and cons of exchange rate management and central bank independence. The final section of the book presents case studies on monetary and central bank experiences in Germany, the United States, Canada and Hungary.

Game Theory And Decision Theory In Agent-Based Systems is a collection of papers from international leading researchers, that offers a broad view of the many ways game theory and decision theory can be applied in agent-based systems, from standard applications of the core elements of the theory to more cutting edge developments. The range of topics discussed in this book provide the reader with the first comprehensive volume that reflects both the depth and breadth of work in applying techniques from game theory and decision theory to design agent-based systems. Chapters include: Selecting Partners; Evolution of Agents with Moral Sentiments in an IPD Exercise; Dynamic Desires; Emotions and Personality; Decision-Theoretic Approach to Game Theory; Shopbot Economics; Finding the Best Way to Join in; Shopbots and Pricebots in Electronic Service Markets; Polynomial Time Mechanisms; Multi-Agent Q-learning and Regression Trees; Satisficing Equilibria; Investigating Commitment Flexibility in Multi-agent Contracts; Pricing in Agent Economies using Multi-agent Q-learning; Using Hypergames to Increase Planned Payoff and Reduce Risk; Bilateral Negotiation with Incomplete and Uncertain Information; Robust Combinatorial Auction Protocol against False-name Bids.

This two-volume set LNCS 11437 and 11438 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 41st European Conference on IR Research, ECIR 2019, held in Cologne, Germany, in April 2019. The 48 full papers presented together with 2 keynote papers, 44 short papers, 8 demonstration papers, 8 invited CLEF papers, 11 doctoral consortium papers, 4 workshop papers, and 4 tutorials were carefully reviewed and selected from 365 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: Modeling Relations; Classification and Search; Recommender Systems; Graphs; Query Analytics; Representation; Reproducibility (Systems); Reproducibility (Application); Neural IR; Cross Lingual IR; QA and Conversational Search; Topic Modeling; Metrics; Image IR; Short Papers; Demonstration Papers; CLEF Organizers Lab Track; Doctoral Consortium Papers; Workshops; and Tutorials.

"This book offers the latest research in IS/IT applications related to business and operations management, with contributions in the form of case studies, methodologies, best practices, frameworks, and research"--Provided by publisher.

This book contains contributions by some of the leading researchers in the area of grey systems theory and applications. All the papers included in this volume are selected from the contributions physically presented at the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Grey Systems and Intelligent Services, November 11 – 12, 2009, Nanjing, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China. This event was jointly sponsored by IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society, Natural Science Foundation of China, and Grey Systems Society of China. Additionally, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics also invested heavily in this event with its direct and indirect financial and administrative supports. The conference aimed at bringing together all scholars and experts in the fields of grey systems and intelligent services from around the world to share their cutting edge research results, exchange innovative ideas, promote mutual understanding, and seek potential opportunities for collaboration. The conference program c- mittee received 1054 full paper submissions from 16 countries and geographical regions. Nine hundred sixty four papers were submitted for regular sessions and 90 papers were tunnelled directly for special topic sessions. All the submitted papers, including those aiming at special topic sessions, were rigorously reviewed by at least 3 reviewers. Based on the reviewers’ reports, 251 papers were accepted for oral presentations, while 99 accepted for poster presentations. In other words, only slightly over 33% of the submitted papers were accepted by this conference. The rate of acceptance was lower than one third of the total submissions.