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AbstractThis historical review surveys the evolution of the science–society relationship in post‐war Britain. It observes the transformation since the 1980s of the idea of 'public understanding of science', in which scientists and laypeople differ by virtue of the scientific knowledge they have, into the idea of 'public engagement which science', in which scientists, laypeople and policy makers negotiate policy for future science and technology. We survey recent critiques of public engagement which draw attention to the ways in which it constructs particular publics, and which question its capacity to contribute to policy‐making.

Militaries commonly require recruits to pass a test that measures aptitude for military service. In this paper, we show that such tests may also act as a device for screening out low-motivation recruits, even if it is assumed that motivation is not measured by such tests and is not correlated with aptitude.

Economists generally believe that forcing young people to serve in the military is by definition a bad idea. Illustrating this, Lee and McKenzie (1992) reviewed twelve textbooks in basic economics and found that all twelve agreed that an all-volunteer military force (AVF) was inherently more efficient than conscription. In juxtaposition to this seeming consensus amongst economists, however, many countries retain conscription.

This paper offers a new approach to government vendor selection decisions in major public procurements. A key challenge is for government purchasing agents to select vendors that deliver the best combination of desired nonprice attributes at realistic funding levels. The mechanism proposed in this paper is a multiattribute first-price, sealed-bid procurement auction. It extends traditional price-only auctions to those in which competition takes place exclusively over attribute bundles. The model is a multiattribute auction in which a set of possible budget levels is specified. This model reveals the benefits of defining a procurement alternative in terms of its value to the buyer over a range of possible expenditures, rather than as a single point in budget-value space. This new approach leads to some interesting results. In particular, it suggests that in a fiscally constrained environment, the traditional approach of eliminating dominated alternatives could lead to suboptimal decisions. Finally, an extension of the model explicitly examines the buyer's decision problem under budget uncertainty by applying a utility function assessed over the value measure.

We consider the contribution of reserves to the efficient mobilization of military manpower. Our analysis suggests that offering recruits an option to serve as reservists enhances social welfare if there is a sufficiently strong relationship between recruit performance in the military and their expected civilian income.

This paper offers a new approach to government's vendor selection decisions in major public procurements. A key challenge is for government purchasing agents to select vendors that deliver the best combination of desired non-price attributes at realistic funding levels. The mechanism proposed in this paper is a multiattribute first price, sealed bid procurement auction. It extends traditional price-only auctions to one in which competition takes place exclusively over attribute bundles. The model is a multiattribute auction in which a set of possible budget levels is specified. This model reveals the benefits of defining a procurement alternative in terms of its value to the buyer over a range of possible expenditures, rather than as a single point in budget-value space. This new approach leads to some interesting results. In particular, it suggests that in a fiscally constrained environment, the traditional approach of eliminating dominated alternatives could lead to sub-optimal decisions. Finally, an extension of the model explicitly examines the buyer's decision problem under budget uncertainty by applying a utility function assessed over the value measure.

Proceedings Paper (for Acquisition Research Program) ; This paper explores vendor selection decisions where competing vendors offer similar products with multiple non-price attributes. Traditional ''multi-attribute auctions'' such as the USAF Air Tanker competition include prices alongside other attributes in vendor proposals. Buyers generally select winning bidders using a weighted average of price and non-price attributes. A different approach is recommended here: to embed vendor prices directly in the buyer''s budget constraint. A first step is to conduct a simple multi-attribute auction with a fixed budget. The government buyer only evaluates vendor proposals that satisfy the budget constraint, choosing the proposal (non-price attribute bundle) which offers the greatest ''value for money'' (i.e., budget). The next step is to address budget uncertainty, expanding the model to incorporate a range of budgets. This leads to several interesting results, including that the traditional practice, and classroom technique, of eliminating dominated alternatives can lead to sub-optimal decisions. Improving public procurement decisions requires forecasting a range of future budgets, and soliciting information from vendors that allows procurement alternatives to be defined as functions of the value offered by each vendor over a range of budgets, rather than as a single point in budget-value (cost-effectiveness) space. Under more realistic budget scenarios, different vendor selection decisions will occur that benefit both troops and taxpayers. ; Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research Program ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Sponsored Report (for Acquisition Research Program) ; The current fiscal crisis has placed unprecedented pressure on public procurements. A major target of future public spending cuts is likely to be defense expenditures. Within the defense budget, the biggest and most immediate targets are likely to be the acquisition of new equipment, facilities, services, and supplies. Addressing the growing global challenge of affordability, this paper offers a new approach to government''s vendor selection decisions in major public procurements. In the absence of profits to guide public procurement decisions, the challenge that faces a government buyer is to select the vendor that delivers the best combination of desired non-price attributes at realistic funding levels. The governance mechanism proposed in this paper is a multiattribute first price, sealed bid procurement auction. It extends traditional price-only auctions to one in which competition takes place exclusively over bundles of desired non-price attributes. The first iteration of the model is a multiattribute auction in which a fixed budget constraint is specified. Next, the model is expanded to incorporate a range of possible budget levels. This expanded model reveals the benefits to the buyer of defining a procurement alternative (vendor bid proposal) in terms of its value to the buyer over a range of possible expenditures, rather than as a single point in budget-value space. This new approach leads to some interesting results. In particular, it suggests that in a fiscally constrained environment, the traditional approach of eliminating dominated alternatives could lead to sub-optimal decisions. The final extension of the model explicitly examines the buyer''s decision problem under budget uncertainty. ; Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research Program ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Symposium Presentation (for Acquisition Research Program) ; Naval Postgraduate School Acquisition Research Program ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Peter Fishburn has had a tremendous impact on the field of decision analysis, developing ideas that would come to be foundational across decision analysis and that would impact the literature on decision making in economics, psychology, finance, engineering, and mathematics. This paper provides an overview of his legacy. We summarize 11 of his influential papers. We then trace his impact on recent research in topics including preference representation and elicitation, risk attitudes, time preferences, health preferences, behavioral decision making, social choice and voting, and geometric analyses.Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/deca.2022.0461 .

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.

When making decisions involving alternatives with risk, individuals are often unable to express or view the possible outcomes in terms of a fundamental objective. In many cases, using a means objective is more practical or more accessible. However, to apply information about a means objective correctly, a decision maker must first translate it into information about a fundamental objective. This paper presents and discusses the results of two experiments regarding decision makers' preferences and decision process when information is presented either in terms of a means objective or a fundamental objective. We find that individuals are somewhat more likely to choose a risky alternative when information is expressed in terms of means objectives than in terms of fundamental objectives, and that this difference is not significantly smaller among individuals with greater quantitative ability. Individuals are also better able to articulate their decision process when given information related to fundamental objectives than they are with information related to means objectives. In addition, we find that individuals who focus on the uncertainty involved in a decision are more likely to choose a sure thing, whereas individuals who focus on consequences are more likely to choose a gamble.

The equivalence of two elicitation methods (sequences and matching) has been assumed when empirically testing the traditional discounting model even though the respective literature has revealed results that are dependent on the procedure used. Three common anomalies revealed (gain/loss asymmetry, short/long asymmetry, and the absolute magnitude effect) are investigated using the two different methods in a within-subjects experiment. In both procedures, it appears that the participants in this study evaluate monetary outcomes over time differently than the discounting model predicts. Patterns consistent with two of the anomalies (gain/loss and absolute magnitude effect) surface and interact in both elicitation techniques. Finally, a systematic inconsistency exists between the two methods. We observe significantly more consistency between the two elicitation techniques when the outcome is a gain in the relatively far future than when it is a future loss. This may be due to the participants' inability to display a preference for spreading losses, which they revealed in the sequences task, in the matching task.