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Our first two articles address decisions involving the passage of time. First, Steven A. Lippman and John W. Mamer explore the question of whether making "Exploding Offers" is beneficial to an employer seeking to hire or, in a more general framing of the question, to a purchaser of an asset. Next, in "Dynamic Purchase Decisions Under Regret: Price and Availability," Enrico Diecidue, Nils Rudi, and Wenjie Tang examine situations in which a person can make a forward purchase in period 1 or a spot purchase in period 2. Our next two articles involve game theoretic models. In our third article, Steven A. Lippman and Kevin F. McCardle model joint decision making (motivated by dividing up a fortune) via "Embedded Nash Bargaining: Risk Aversion and Impatience." The fourth article is "Robust Adversarial Risk Analysis: A Level-k Approach," by Laura McLay, Casey Rothschild, and Seth Guikema. The final article is on "A Framework for Solving Hybrid Influence Diagrams Containing Deterministic Conditional Distributions," by Yijing Li and Prakash P. Shenoy.

Our first article, by Jay Simon and Francois Melese is on "A Multiattribute Sealed-Bid Procurement Auction with Multiple Budgets for Government Vendor Selection." Next, Ali E. Abbas develops "The Multiattribute Utility Tree." In our third article, Thomas W. Keelin and Bradford W. Powley introduce a method for encoding uncertainty on a continuous variable using "Quantile-Parameterized Distributions." Next, Warren J. Hahn and James S. Dyer present "A Discrete Time Approach for Modeling Two-Factor Mean-Reverting Stochastic Processes." The final article is by Jeffery L. Guyse and Jay Simon on "Consistency Among Elicitation Techniques for Intertemporal Choice: A Within-Subjects Investigation of the Anomalies."

In our first article, Joseph B. Kadane discusses "Partial-Kelly Strategies and Expected Utility: Small-Edge Asymptotics." The next article is by Konstantinos V. Katsikopoulos, on "Psychological Heuristics for Making Inferences: Definition, Performance, and the Emerging Theory and Practice." We then move to papers analyzing strategic national defense. In our third article, David J. Caswell, Ronald A. Howard, and M. Elisabeth Paté-Cornell present "Analysis of National Strategies to Counter a Country's Nuclear Weapons Program." Next, Kjell Hausken and Jun Zhuang examine "Governments' and Terrorists' Defense and Attack in a T-Period Game." Finally, Jeryl L. Mumpower analyzes strategy in the sport of squash in "Playing Squash Against Ralph Keeney: Should Weaker Players Always Prefer Shorter Games?" In conclusion, we announce our upcoming special issue on "Games and Decisions in Reliability and Risk."

In our first article, Samuel D. Bond, Kurt A. Carlson, and Ralph L. Keeney address the important stage of decision problem formulation in "Improving the Generation of Decision Objectives." Next, Charles M. Harvey and Lars Peter Østerdal develop "Cardinal Scales for Health Evaluation." We then move to consideration of risk taking and risk perception. In our third article, Alen Nosić and Martin Weber report their experimental study on "How Riskily Do I Invest? The Role of Risk Attitudes, Risk Perceptions, and Overconfidence." In the next article, Michel Denuit and Louis Eeckhoudt provide results on "Bivariate Stochastic Dominance and Substitute Risk-(In)dependent Utilities." In our final article, Bjørn Sandvik and Lars Thorlund-Petersen derive results on "Sensitivity Analysis of Risk Tolerance." At the end of this article are some recent journal accomplishments, including the coverage in the Social Sciences Citation Index.

Our first two articles address resource allocation, across risky projects and across budget allocations over time. First, Philip Bromiley demonstrates numerically that the interaction between cumulative prospect theory parameters rules out the ability to make simple general predictions of resource allocation choices in "A Prospect Theory Model of Resource Allocation." Our second article, by Pekka Mild and Ahti Salo, on "Combining a Multiattribute Value Function with an Optimization Model: An Application to Dynamic Resource Allocation for Infrastructure Maintenance," reports a generic model for allocating maintenance budgets over time that was originally developed for the Finnish Road Administration. Our third article, by Jesus Rios and David Rios Insua, develops a method for "Supporting Negotiations over Influence Diagrams," for when there is disagreement about utilities and probabilities. Fourth, Ben Ewing and Erin Baker present their work on the "Development of a Green Building Decision Support Tool: A Collaborative Process." In our final article, "On the Decision to Take a Pitch," J. Eric Bickel analyzes a common decision in baseball, contributing to the area of sports decision analysis.

Our first two articles in this issue focus on decision analysis in practice, from charitable decisions to government policy making. Kevin F. McCardle, Kumar Rajaram, and Christopher S. Tang present "A Decision Analysis Tool for Evaluating Fundraising Tiers." Next, Rex V. Brown draws upon his years as a consultant in "Working with Policy Makers on Their Choices: A Decision Analyst Reminisces." The next two articles are on aggregating probability judgments from multiple experts. Ali E. Abbas presents "A Kullback-Leibler View of Linear and Log-Linear Pools." The final article, on "Combining the Opinions of Experts Who Partition Events Differently," is by Robert F. Bordley. The call for papers on auctions for a special issue in memory of Michael Rothkopf is also included in this issue.

All of the papers in this issue focus on the value of obtaining information about uncertainties. We begin with an article by J. Eric Bickel on "The Relationship Between Perfect and Imperfect Information in a Two-Action Risk-Sensitive Problem." Next, is an article by Philippe Delquié on "The Value of Information and Intensity of Preference." Our third article, which uses an example of an oilfield decision to demonstrate an approach to "Valuing Future Information Under Uncertainty Using Polynomial Chaos," is by Michael Prange, William J. Bailey, Benoit Couët, Hugues Djikpesse, Margaret Armstrong, Alain Galli, and David Wilkinson. In the final article, Thomas Eppel and Detlof von Winterfeldt describe the calculation of value of information about the contents of waste storage tanks in "Value-of-Information Analysis For Nuclear Waste Storage Tanks." Since information is the topic of this issue, our trivia question is about the late Jacob Marschak, from whom I learned about the economics of information and about clarity of thought.

This issue of Decision Analysis begins with an article by Philippe Delquié, "Interpretation of the Risk Tolerance Coefficient in Terms of Maximum Acceptable Loss." The risk tolerance coefficient is an exponential utility function's parameter, which is positive for risk averse decision makers. Next is an article titled "Optimal Betting Strategies for Simultaneous Games," by Andrew Grant, David Johnstone, and Oh Kang Kwon, which examines how to bet on two or more games (such as sports events or political outcomes) at once. Our third paper, "Decision-Analytic Approach to Knockout Auctions," by Yigal Gerchak, examines an approach for bidding on a single jointly owned indivisible item (such as a cherished item in an estate with multiple heirs). Our fourth paper develops a method for evaluating bids. Carlos A. Bana e Costa, João C. Lourenço, Manuel P. Chagas, and João C. Bana e Costa use a multiple objective value function approach in their article "Development of Reusable Bid Evaluation Models for the Portuguese Electric Transmission Company." We end with an article by Jason R. W. Merrick which presents an approach for "Getting the Right Mix of Experts" when they give possibly correlated probability judgments.

This issue begins with a multi-attribute utility model by Ralph L. Keeney and Dinah A. Vernik for a woman's decision to have a child when facing the biological clock. Then Barry R. Cobb presents a method for analysis of influence diagrams which contain continuous decision variables and non-Gaussian probability distributions. Next is an article by Johan René van Dorp, Salvador Cruz Rambaud, José García Pérez, and Rafael Herrerías Pleguezuelo, who introduce a probability elicitation procedure for the generalized trapezoidal distribution with a uniform central stage. This issue ends with an essay by Michael H. Rothkopf on why decision analysis, rather than game theory, is the right tool for auctions.

This issue begins with two articles on probability scoring rules, "Some Comparisons Among Quadratic, Spherical, and Logarithmic Scoring Rules" by J. Eric Bickel and "The Parimutuel Kelly Probability Scoring Rule" David J. Johnstone. Next, Mats Danielson, Love Ekenberg, Jim Idefeldt, and Aron Larsson describe their multiple attribute approach to aiding public decision making in Sweden in "Using a Software Tool for Public Decision Analysis: The Case of Nacka Municipality." Finally, Sandra Hoffman, Paul Fischbeck, Alan Krupnick, and Michael McWilliams present their method for gathering and characterizing multiple experts' judgments and apply it to food safety risks in the United States in "Eliciting Information on Uncertainty from Heterogeneous Expert Panels to Improve Risk-Based Decision-Making: A Demonstration from Food Safety."

This issue marks the beginning of my term as Editor-in-Chief of Decision Analysis. Founding Editors-in-Chief Bob Clemen and Don Kleinmuntz guided us well through the first three years of publication. Beginning now, with our fourth volume, I am introducing a new structure with associate editors and a managing editor. Combined with our existing editorial board, this structure will allow us to better serve the diverse decision analysis community and will position us to manage the growth of our journal. This issue features articles by Hazen on the addition of life goals to health preference models, by Abbas on invariant utility functions, and by van Binsbergen and Marx on relationships between decision analysis and game theory. Also, Hurley analyzes the wisdom of the United States Ryder Cup Captain Curtis Strange's decision to place the top golfers in the last matches of the team golf event.

AbstractWhen outcomes are defined over a geographic region, measures of spatial risk regarding these outcomes can be more complex than traditional measures of risk. One of the main challenges is the need for a cardinal preference function that incorporates the spatial nature of the outcomes. We explore preference conditions that will yield the existence of spatial measurable value and utility functions, and discuss their application to spatial risk analysis. We also present a simple example on household freshwater usage across regions to demonstrate how such functions can be assessed and applied.

For the last 30 years, researchers in risk analysis, decision analysis, and economics have consistently proven that decisionmakers employ different processes for evaluating and combining anticipated and actual losses, gains, delays, and surprises. Although rational models generally prescribe a consistent response, people's heuristic processes will sometimes lead them to be inconsistent in the way they respond to information presented in theoretically equivalent ways. We point out several promising future research directions by listing and detailing a series of answered, partly answered, and unanswered questions.

This paper presents a multiple-objective decision analysis approach to qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate different potassium iodide (KI) distribution plans for a hypothetical local region. We developed this approach for a U.S. National Research Council committee that was charged with figuring out the best means for protecting people against potential thyroid cancer resulting from the release of radioactive iodine from nuclear incidents occurring due to terrorism or accidents. We first identify an objectives hierarchy and then develop the single-attribute value functions and the weights for the objectives using a swing weight method. The identification of the largest value gaps between the status quo and the ideal situation helps to develop potential KI distribution plans. We then use an additive value function to assess the performance of these new alternatives, with the status quo as a benchmark, by computing their overall values. Finally, sensitivity analysis for the KI problem shows how this approach can create more key insights for the improvement of health and safety decision-making processes.

This "From the Editors" column is co-authored by Editor-in-Chief Rakesh K. Sarin and former Editor-in-Chief L. Robin Keller. Our first article, by Ralph L. Keeney, presents "Foundations for Group Decision Analysis." The second article is "Toward an Improved Methodology to Construct and Reconcile Decision Analytic Preference Judgments" by Richard M. Anderson and Robert Clemen. Next, Manel Baucells and Rakesh K. Sarin discuss "Determinants of Experienced Utility: Laws and Implications." The fourth paper, "Estimating Second Order Probability Beliefs from Subjective Survival Data," is by Péter Hudomiet and Robert J. Willis. The final paper, by Kun Zan and J. Eric Bickel, is on "Components of Portfolio Value of Information."