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Insight is offered into the validity of six principal myths which reflect positive and negative views of the use of systems theory in reaching decisions

Contents: Foreword / by Vernon Smith -- 1. Introduction to smart decision-making / Morris Altman -- Part I Smart decision-makers, different types of rationality, and outcomes -- 2. Rational inefficiency : smart thinking, bounded rationality, and the scientific basis for economic failure and success / Morris Altman -- 3. Rational mistakes that make us smart / Nathan Berg -- 4. Rational choice as if the choosers were human / Peter J. Boettke and Rosolino A. Candela -- 5. Smart predictions from wrong data : the case of ecological correlations / Florian Kutzner and Tobias Vogel -- 6. Heuristics : fast, frugal, and smart / Shabnam Mousavi, Björn meder, Hansjörg Neth and Reza Kheirandish -- 7. The beauty of simplicity? (simple) heuristics and the opportunities yet to be realized / Andreas Ortmann and Leonidas Spiliopoulos -- 8. Smart persons and human development : the missing ingredient in behavioral economics / John F. Tomer -- Part II Aspects of smart decision-making -- 9. Behavioral strategy at the frontline : insights and inspirations from the US Marine Corps / Mie Augier -- 10. Feminist economics for smart behavioural economics / Siobhan Austen -- 11. How regret moves individual and collective choices towards rationality / Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde -- 12. Is it rational to be in love? / Paul Frijters and Gigi Foster -- 13. Behavioural economic anthropology / Giuseppe Danese and Luigi Mittone -- Part III Development and governance -- 14. Do changes in farmers' seed traits align with climate change? a case study of maize in Chiapas, México / C. Leigh Anderson, Andrew Cronholm and Pierre Biscaye -- 15. Rationality, globalization, and x-efficiency among financial institutions / Roger Frantz -- 16. The evolution of governance structures in a polycentric system / Edward Mcphail and Vlad Tarko -- Part IV Tax behaviour -- 17. Taxation and nudging / Simon James -- 18. Income tax compliance / Erich Kirchler, Barbara Hartl and Katharina Gangl -- Part V Smart finance -- 19. Financial decisions in the household / Bernadette Kamleitner, Till Mengay and Erich Kirchle -- 20. Employing priming to shed light on financial decision-making processes / Doron Kilger -- 21. Experimental asset markets: behaviour and bubbles / Owen Powell and Natalia Shestakova -- 22. To consume or to save : are we maximising or what? / Tobias F. Rötheli -- Part VI Dimensions of health -- 23. Time orientation effects on health behaviour / Jannette Van Beek, Michel J.J. Handgraaf and Gerrit Antonides -- 24. Behavioral aspects of obesity / Ddelia Rosin -- 25. Time inconsistent preferences in intertemporal choices for physical activity & weight loss : evidence from canadian health surveys / Nazmi Sari -- 26. Suicide amongst smart people / Bijou Yang and David Lester -- Part VII Sociological dimensions of smart decision-making -- 27. Seeing and knowing others : the impact of social ties on economic interactions / Astrid Hopfensitz -- 28. Weakness of will and stiffness of will : how far are shirking, slackening, favoritism, spoiling of children, and pornography from obsessive-compulsive behavior? / Elias L. Khalil -- 29. The role of identity, personal and social capital in community crime prevention / Ambrose Leung and Brandon Harrison -- 30. Norms, culture, and cognition / Shinji Teraji -- Part VIII Morals and ethics -- 31. Rational choice in public and private spheres / Herbert Gintis -- 32. Ethics and simple games / Mark Pingle -- Index.

In the face of the discourse about the democratic deficit and declining public support for the European Union (EU), institutionalist scholars have examined the roles of institutions in EU decision making and in particular the implications of the empowered European Parliament. Almost in isolation from this literature, prior research on public attitudes toward the EU has largely adopted utilitarian, identity and informational accounts that focus on individual‐level attributes. By combining the insights from the institutional and behavioural literature, this article reports on a novel cross‐national conjoint experiment designed to investigate multidimensionality of public attitudes by taking into account the specific roles of institutions and distinct stages in EU decision making. Analysing data from a large‐scale experimental survey in 13 EU member states, the findings demonstrate how and to what extent the institutional design of EU decision making shapes public support. In particular, the study finds a general pattern of public consensus about preferred institutional reform regarding powers of proposal, adoption and voting among European citizens in different countries, but notable dissent about sanctioning powers. The results show that utilitarian and partisan considerations matter primarily for the sanctioning dimension in which many respondents in Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark and Sweden prefer national courts to the Court of Justice of the EU.

This article analyses and quantifies the costs of suboptimal decision making for an investor with a multi‐period horizon. In light of the empirical evidence that investors are too conservative and hold portfolios that are insufficiently diversified, we evaluate the costs of suboptimal equity participation both analytically and using simulation, and also estimate the costs of suboptimal diversification using simulation. We find that suboptimal leverage imposes only modest costs on the investor for reasonable parameter values. While the costs of inadequate diversification can be very high, we find that, because of the higher returns on small firms, an equally weighted portfolio of as few as five randomly chosen firms can provide the same level of expected utility as the value weighted market portfolio.(J.E.L.: G11, G18, G23).

Contemporary environmental decisions are made within the context of sustainability aimed at meeting integrated ecological, economic and social goals. Most involve a complex mix of actors and institutions - differing values and differing interests. Choices are difficult and often controversial, and decision-making processes and contexts provide crucial influences on outcomes. This book explores these processes and context and the influences which affect them

We make values explicit when routines break down. I do not deduct a particular pragmatic way of dealing with such conflicts from a position of value pluralism, something that seems to have attracted the ire of my learned colleagues in this debate. Instead, it is the other way around. I used value pluralism to explain not only how administrators dealt with difficult choices but also that, in the large majority of cases, they managed to arrive at decisions that seemed judged to be reasonable. This makes for a very different project than my colleagues make it out to be.

ABSTRACTA laboratory experiment examined the effects of applying decision support system (DSS) technology to decision making in ill‐structured problem environments under varying information conditions. Marketing executives participated in the experiment which investigated the effects of DSS availability, DSS training, and data availability on dependent variables that included: (1) the number of alternatives considered by a subject during decision making, (2) the period of time spent by a subject to complete the decision‐making process, (3) the subject's perceived confidence in the decisions he or she had made, (4) the amount of data considered by a subject's during decision making, (5) the individual subject's decision processing, and (6) the subject's performance overall. Our results indicate that all three factors significantly affect the number of alternatives considered by subjects during the decision‐making process. We therefore suggest that DSS training be coordinated with decision training in order to realize the potential of DSSs as described in the DSS literature.

Existing literature highlights that constitutional courts influence lawmakers' policy choices without actively intervening in the policymaking process. Lawmakers know that courts may scrutinize their acts and have incentives to amend their policies to pre-empt judicial interventions. However, evidence suggests that lawmakers are not always prepared to sacrifice policy objectives to avoid censure from courts. I develop a formal model showing how lawmakers who provoke confrontations with courts shape judicial decision-making. Drawing on an original dataset of German federal laws adopted between 1977 and 2015 that were reviewed by the German Federal Constitutional Court, I then show that the Court moderated its strike rate of laws when lawmakers had dismissed credible advice that their acts were unconstitutional. The theoretical argument and empirical evidence indicate that courts are more likely to show deference to lawmakers who push constitutional boundaries in their policy choices.

This paper considers decision problems where: (1) The exact probability distribution over the states of nature is not precisely known, but certain prior information is available about the possibilities of these outcomes; (2) A prior distribution over the states of nature is known, but new constraint information about the probabilities becomes available. The maximum entropy principle asserts that the probability distribution with maximum entropy, satisfying the prior knowledge, should be used in the decision problem. The minimum cross‐entropy principle says that the posterior distribution is the one which minimizes cross‐entropy, subject to the new constraint information. The entropy principles have not gone uncriticized, and this literature, together with that justifying the principles, is surveyed. Both principles are illustrated in a number of situations where the distribution is either discrete or continuous. The discrete distribution case with prior interval estimates based on expert opinions is considered in detail.

The consensus reaching process is the most important step in a group decision making scenario. This step is most frequently identified as a process consisting of some discussion rounds in which several decision makers, which are involved in the problem, discuss their points of view with the purpose of obtaining the maximum agreement before making the decision. Consensus reaching processes have been well studied and a large number of consensus approaches have been developed. In recent years, the researchers in the field of decision making have shown their interest in social networks since they may be successfully used for modelling communication among decision makers. However, a social network presents some features differentiating it from the classical scenarios in which the consensus reaching processes have been applied. The objective of this study is to investigate the main consensus methods proposed in social networks and bring out the new challenges that should be faced in this research field. ; European Union (EU) TIN2013-40658-P TIN2016-75850-P ; RUDN University 5-100 ; National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) 71571166

Develops six models to explain how networks of political and social contacts affect exercise of power and development of policy in local communities. Summary in French. Pluralism, neo-pluralism, policy advocacy, institutionalism, bureaucratic politics, and localism.

Objective: This article attempts to study and model the decision-making process under risk conditions caused by social and political shifts. The main purpose of the article is to identify the major patterns that determine the features of risk assessment in business as the main element contributing to the achievement of economic security of the organization, as well as to conduct a comparative analysis of methods for assessing and managing investment risks. Methods: Methods of cognition, retrospective and documentary analysis, as well as synthesis, generalization, and systematization were used as methods in the performance of the work. In contemporary economic analysis, various methods of decision-making in risky situations are used. Conclusion: The most effective ways to reduce risk in the context of instability of the economic and political situation in Russia are the scenarios based method and the hierarchy analysis method. Besides, the features of decision-making in Internet marketing are considered in the present article.