The axiomatic foundations of the Bayesian approach to decision making assurne precision in the decision maker's judgements. In practicc, dccision makers often provide only partial and/or doubtful information. We unify and expand results to deal with those cases introducing a general framework for sensitivity analysis in multi-objective decision making. We study first decision making problems under partial information. We provide axioms leading to modelling preferences by families of value functions, in problems under certainty, and moJelling beliefs by families of probability distributions...

This thesis is a theoretical study of the optimal dynamic policies of a, to some extent, slowly adjusting firm that faces an exogeneously given technological progress and an exogeneously given business cycle. It belongs to the area of mathematical economics. It is intended to appeal to mathematical economists in the first place, economists in the second place and mathematicians in the third place. It entails an attempt to stretch the limits of the application of deterministic dynamic optimisation to economics, in particular to firm behaviour. A well-known. Dutch economist (and trained...

This work was written during my visits at CORE (Belgium), at the Faculty of Economics and Politics in Cambridge (England), and at the Department of Mathematics at the ETH in ZUrich. I wish to thank J.H. Dr ze (CORE) for most help ful suggestions, and I am indebted to H. BUhlmann (ETH) for his advice and for encouragement. The comments by M. Granzio1, M. Janssen and by anonymous referees were very useful. However, I assume the responsibility for remaining errors. I am grateful to R. Boller, I. Lather and M. Urfer for their careful typing of the manuscript. Support by the SWiss National Science...

Meine Kollegen am Institut fUr Wirtschaftspolitik I an der Universitat Bonn haben mir durch ihre Anregungen und Diskussions bereitschaft sehr geholfen. Zu besonderem Dank bin ich dabei meinen Freunden Michael A dam s, Thomas Han c hen und Urs S c h wei z e r verpflichtet. In tiefster Schuld stehe ich jedoch bei den Herren Professoren Martin H ell wig und Carl Christian von Wei z sac k e r. Ohne ihre anregenden Kommentare und endlose Geduld hatte diese Arbeit sicherlich nie entstehen konnen. Beide haben, jeder auf seine Art, meine wissenschaftliche Weiterentwicklung sehr gefordert. Ich hoffe,...

In Japan there are many research workers who are especially inter- ested in stochastic models in reliability theory. On the above back- ground, it was a nice occasion for the Editors to organize the Reliabil- ity Symposium with emphasis on "Stochastic Models in Reliability Theory." The Reliability Symposium was held in Nagoya, Japan, April 23-24, 1984. In the Symposium there were 14 contributions of the recent research works on stochastic models in reliability theory in Japan. We briefly sketch all the contributions by the following classifications just for conveni- ence. The first three...

The present volume is an outgrowth of several years' interactions be tween U. S. American and W. -German economists interested in analyzing the structure and functioning of housing markets, and the impacts of govern mental policies on these markets. Such an interaction turns out to be fruitful in several respects. Unquestionably, German economists can learn a lot from the high level of sophistication exhibited in much of the American literature. However, this is not a one way road of learning and the adoption of concepts, for the following reason. Most of the analysis presented in that...

Seit Beginn der siebziger Jahre findet das Konzept rationaler Preiser wartungen verstarkt Eingang in die wirtschaftstheoretische Literatur. Rationale Preiserwartungen sind ein Resultat des Nutzen- bzw. Profit maximierungskalkuls der Individuen in Marktgesellschaften. Es sind korrekte Preiserwartungen, die jedoch nicht zufallig gebildet werden, sondern von den Marktteilnehmern unter Kenntnis der okonomischen Zu sammenhange und Daten berechnet und ggf. ausgewahlt werden. Tendenziell, so die These, werden diese Kenntnisse beschafft, und diese Berechnungen durchgefUhrt, da falsche...

'l'he papers contained in this volume were originally presented at the International symposium on New Directions in Urban Systems Modelling held at the University of Waterloo in July, 1983. The papers have been reviewed and rewritten since that time. The exception is the introductory paper written specially by Manfred Fischer and Peter Nijkamp as an introduction to this volume. The manuscript was prepared in the word processing unit in the nepartment of Civil Engineering, university of Waterloo. The sustained work of Mrs. I. Steffler in preparing this manuscript is gratefully acknowledged....

Since the beginning of the fifties, the ruling paradigm in the discipline of economics has been that of a competitive general equilibrium. Associated dynamic analyses have therefore been preoccupied with the stability of this equilibrium state, corresponding simply to studies of comparative statics. The need to permeate the boundaries of this paradigm in order to open up new pathways for genuine dynamic analysis is now pressing. The contributions contained in this volume spring from this very ambition. A growing circle of economists have recently been inspired by two distinct but...