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This updated 3rd edition is devoted to the analysis of various Stochastic Dominance (SD) decision rules. It discusses the pros and cons of each of the alternate SD rules, the application of these rules to various research areas like statistics, agriculture, medicine, measuring income inequality and the poverty level in various countries, and of course, to investment decision-making under uncertainty. The book features changes and additions to the chapters, and also includes two completely new chapters. One deals with asymptotic SD and the relation between FSD and the maximum geometric mean (MGM) rule (or the maximum growth portfolio). The other new chapter discusses bivariate SD rules where the individual's utility is determined not only by his own wealth, but also by his standing relative to his peer group.

The article investigates the Estonian government's response to the fiscal crisis by looking at the dynamics of the decision-making processes during cutback management from 2008 to 2013 from the dichotomy of centralization–decentralization. The study explores the cutback decision-making by pinpointing the main actors and contextual variables shedding light on the management of fiscal crisis. It is demonstrated that, in general, the fiscal crisis contributed to increasing levels of centralization in governmental decision-making. The crisis decision-making was dominated by centralized political decisions and non-inclusion of the opposition and interest groups. Still, achieving urgent solutions was facilitated by decentralized decisions at the ministerial level, the empowerment of budgetary institutions and the intensive engagement of the civil servants. It has been indicated that the initially short-term procedures to enable cuts and resultant changes in decision-making processes are mostly in effect still in 2014 and thereby influence public administration practices in the long run. Points for practitioners The study shows that cutback management may lead to urgency in governmental decision-making, where centralization facilitates quick decisions. It is also demonstrated that a minority government is able to achieve fiscal adjustment even in a context of high political conflict. The crisis context sets new requirements to the competencies of public servants, as cutback management obliges them to cope with new and very complicated tasks. The article indicates that short-term cuts and changes in decision-making processes intended to alleviate the acute phase of crisis may remain in effect considerably longer than initially planned and thereby influence public administration practices in the long run.

Collective decision-making refers to a process in which the agents of a community exchange opinions with the objective of reaching a common decision. It is often assumed that a collective decision is reached through collaboration among the individuals. However in many contexts, concerning for instance collective human behavior, it is more realistic to assume that the agents can collaborate or compete with each other. In this case, different types of collective behavior can be observed. This thesis investigates collective decision-making problems in multiagent systems, both in the case of collaborative and of antagonistic interactions. The first problem studied in the thesis is a special instance of the consensus problem, denoted "interval consensus" in this work. It consists in letting the agents impose constraints on the possible common consensus value. It is shown that introducing saturated nonlinearities in the decision-making dynamics to describe how the agents express their opinions effectively allows the agents to influence the achievable consensus value and steer it to the intersection of all the intervals imposed by the agents. A second class of collective decision-making models discussed in the thesis is obtained by replacing the saturations with sigmoidal nonlinearities. This nonlinear interconnected model is first investigated in the collaborative case and then in the antagonistic case, represented as a signed graph of interactions. In both cases, it is shown that the behavior of the model can be described by means of bifurcation analysis, with the equilibria of the system encoding the possible decisions for the community. A scalar positive parameter, denoted "social effort", is added to the model to represent the strength of commitment between the agents, and plays the role of bifurcation parameter in the analysis. It is shown that if the social effort is small, then the community is in a deadlock situation (i.e., no decision is taken), while if the agents have the "right" amount of commitment two alternative consensus decision states for the community are achieved. However, by further increasing the social effort, the agents may fall in a situation of "overcommitment" where multiple (more than 2) decisions are possible. When antagonistic interactions between the agents are taken into account, they may lead to conflicts or social tensions during the decision-making process, which can be quantified by the notion of "frustration" of the signed network representing the community. The aim is to understand how the presence of antagonism (represented by the amount of frustration of the signed network) influences the collective decision-making process. It is shown that, while the qualitative behavior of the system does not change, the value of social effort required from the agents to break the deadlock (i.e., the value for which the bifurcation is crossed) increases with the frustration of the signed network: the higher the frustration, the higher the required social commitment. A natural context to apply these results is that of political decision-making. In particular it is shown in the thesis how the government formation process in parliamentary democracies can be modeled as a collective decision-making system, where the agents are the parliamentary members, the decision is the vote of confidence they cast to a candidate cabinet coalition, and the social effort parameter is a proxy for the duration of the government negotiation talks. A signed network captures the alliances/rivalries between the political parties in the parliament. The idea is that the frustration of the parliamentary networks should correlate well with the duration of the government negotiation, and it is supported by the analysis of the legislative elections in 29 European countries in the last 40 years. The final contribution of this thesis is an analysis of the structure of (signed) Laplacian matrices and of their pseudoinverses. It is shown that the pseudoinverse of a Laplacian is in general a signed Laplacian, and in particular that the set of eventually exponentially positive Laplacian matrices (i.e., matrices whose exponential is a matrix with negative entries which becomes and stays positive at a certain power) is closed under stability and matrix pseudoinversion.

The central imperative of the National Security Strategy of the Republic of Moldova lies in strengthening the institutional and functional capacities of the national security sector, based on the training of competent personnel with strategic analysis and planning capabilities, as well as policy development in the field of national security. Given that change in any organization must begin with the modernization of the decision-making system, in this paper we aim to contribute to improving the decision-making process in the national security sector by presenting and analyzing the international research landmarks of public decision-making, in order to establish their relevance for the decision-making activities within the stated sector. The usefulness and the degree of applicability of these fundamental scientific works in the national security sector, the ways of extrapolating them on the security decision-making processes, will also be determined.

Background Best interests is a ubiquitous principle in medical policy and practice, informing the treatment of both children and adults. Yet theory underlying the concept of best interests is unclear and rarely articulated. This paper examines bioethical literature for theoretical accounts of best interests to gain a better sense of the meanings and underlying philosophy that structure understandings. Methods A scoping review of was undertaken. Following a literature search, 57 sources were selected and analysed using the thematic method. Results Three themes emerged. The first placed best interests within the structure of wider theory, noting relationships with consequentialism, deontology, prudential value theory, rights and political philosophy. The second mapped a typology of processes of decision-making, among which best interests was ambiguously positioned. It further indicated factors that informed best interests decision-making, primarily preferences, dignity and quality of life. The final theme considered best interests from a relational perspective. Conclusions Characterisation of best interests as strictly paternalist and consequentialist is questionable: while accounts often suggested a consequentialist basis for best interests, arguments appeared philosophically weak. Deontological accounts, found in law and Kantianism, and theories of political liberalism influenced accounts of best interests, with accounts often associating best interests with negative patient preferences (i.e. individual refusals). There was much more emphasis on negative interests than positive interests. Besides preference, factors like dignity and quality of life were held to inform best interests decisions, but generally were weakly defined. To the extent that preferences were unable to inform decision making, decisions were either made by proxy authority or by an intersubjective process of diffuse authority. Differing approaches reflect bifurcations in liberal philosophy between new liberalism and neo-liberalism. Although neither account of authority appears dominant, bias to negative interests suggests that bioethical debate tends to reflect the widespread ascendancy of neo-liberalism. This attitude was underscored by the way relational accounts converged on private familial authority. The visible connections to theory suggest that best interests is underpinned by socio-political trends that may set up frictions with practice. How practice negotiates these frictions remains a key question.

In recent years, the subject of decision-making in public infrastructure projects has become an important topic not only in project management but also in programme and portfolio management literature. Today, interdisciplinary projects are becoming a key focus in the collection, design and execution of government-sponsored programmes. With the various underlying risks and uncertainties, developed countries greatly depend on strategic planning regarding decision-making in infrastructure projects, whereas, in developing countries, the public sector programmes and projects are greatly affected by the lack of standardised and robust decision-making. This is primarily due to the lack of expertise to deal with the increasing complexity of the projects. This article aims at analysing the decision-making process in infrastructure development programmes/projects and discusses the factors affecting the decision-making process and thereby statistically chalking out the key losses caused by the delay in decision-making process in the public sector infrastructure projects of Pakistan. The findings will contribute towards understanding the criticality of decision-making process and mitigating the delay factors by encouraging to introduce standardisation in decision-making processes in the public sector. JEL Classification: C51, D7, D91, L74, O18

Political control is not the only potential source of interference with judicial independence and impartiality. As the stakeholders in cases, litigants have perhaps the most significant incentive to influence the outcome of judges' decision-making. Based on introducing the concept in Chinese society of interpersonal relationships known as guanxi into a discussion of the nature of judicial power, this article examines a report released by the Caijing magazine about 200 corrupt judges convicted between 1995 and 2013 and argues that in China's society with guanxi embedded as its cultural roots, social pressure from relatives, friends and acquaintances of judges is a major source of external interference in judicial decision-making. (China/GIGA)

This book is a result of public dialogue forums in pursuit of accountable and transparent governance in Kenya organized by Twaweza Communications with the support of Ford Foundation. From the convenings it was evident that the stability of Kenya will be driven by the extent to which citizens feel fully included in the development agenda. Quite often, political leaders view the role of citizens in governance as restricted primarily to their participation in the electoral process. This narrow view has led to arrogance and total disregard of citizens after poll results are announced. Under the ne.

PurposeWe argue that a fundamental issue regarding how to search and how to switch between different cognitive modes lies in the decision rules that influence the dynamics of learning and exploration. We examine the search logics underlying these decision rules and propose conceptual prompts that can be applied mentally or computationally to aid managers' decision-making.Design/methodology/approachBy applying Multi-Armed Bandit (MAB) modeling to simulate agents' interaction with dynamic environments, we compared the patterns and performance of selected MAB algorithms under different configurations of environmental conditions.FindingsWe develop three conceptual prompts. First, the simple heuristic-based exploration strategy works well in conditions of low environmental variability and few alternatives. Second, an exploration strategy that combines simple and de-biasing heuristics is suitable for most dynamic and complex decision environments. Third, the uncertainty-based exploration strategy is more applicable in the condition of high environmental unpredictability as it can more effectively recognize deviated patterns.Research limitations/implicationsThis study contributes to emerging research on using algorithms to develop novel concepts and combining heuristics and algorithmic intelligence in strategic decision-making.Practical implicationsThis study offers insights that there are different possibilities for exploration strategies for managers to apply conceptually and that the adaptability of cognitive-distant search may be underestimated in turbulent environments.Originality/valueDrawing on insights from machine learning and cognitive psychology research, we demonstrate the fitness of different exploration strategies in different dynamic environmental configurations by comparing the different search logics that underlie the three MAB algorithms.