The principles of parallel computing, the MPI program parcel, which was used in this work, allow to adapt them to solve tasks using computer nets and peculiarities of implanting this package. The specific character of multiple criteria tasks of optimization and way of solutions using computer nets were cleared up. The decision theory, basic methods of making decisions were described in this work.

Products are priced in order to sell them and make a profit. Every firm, therefore, needs a pricing strategy. Such a strategy should be simple. It should ensure simplicity in tactics and decisions and minimize complications. It is difficult to set a price with the help of only one pricing model. The price of a product may vary due to factors like geographical area, different clients and time difference. Prices must always be cost-compatible. An essential step in deciding on a pricing strategy involves looking at the characteristics of pricing decisions. The classic economic theory is based upon demand and supply and attempts to balance these two concepts. In most cases it works on the basis of cost plus profit. This way of thinking about prices does not guarantee a profit, because costs and profit depend upon volume and volume is dependent on the correct price. Prices can be cut at first. In this way only a small profit will be ensured. If the price is too low it will not automatically ensure a profit. Usually little attention is paid to the market itself in deciding on a price. It is not an easy task to arrive at the 'envelope of acceptable prices". Not to fall into the standard trap of adding profit to cost, one has to have a broad overview of pricing strategies. Multiple approaches are followed in determining prices. Firstly, one can look at cost and its characteristics. By adding a profit margin to cost, one can determine a new price. It may be too low or it may be too high, resulting in the risk that customers will buy the competition's product. It is there for essential to look at strategic concepts like the competition's price as well. The way a buyer looks at certain prices and then decides whether to buy or not, also plays a very important role. All of these factors have to be taken into consideration and all aspects have to be balanced to arrive at a price. A framework for pricing decisions includes the recognition of the need for a pricing decision, determining a price, developing a model, identifying and anticipating pricing problems, developing feasible courses of action, forecasting the outcomes of each alternative and monitoring and reviewing the outcome of each action. Management's pricing decision is taken after studying all this information. Information can be given as a single answer or in detail. Costs can be divided into direct costs and absorption costs. Although prices can be determined in more ways than one, the ideal is to take more than one factor into consideration. Every aspect must carry a weight and these weights can be changed. That is why the multiple criteria decision method is so effective. With this method a few factors are taken into account. Each of these factors adds to the price definition in a certain manner with regard to each product. By changing the profit margin, the price can be adjusted until one is satisfied with the new price. A company's structure, location and nature will play a role in determining which technique is used to determine a price. The best technique is one that can be adjusted and where multiple criteria can be set. The choice of a technique is a personal choice. The multi-criteria method is flexible and prices can be determined uniformly for all products or for a single product. / Thesis (M.Sc. (Computer Science))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.

The choice between purchasing land or entering into a long-term lease is analyzed using a deterministic cash analysis both from the tenant's and landlord's perspective. It is less financially stressful to start farming through a lease agreement than by purchasing the assets. The lease period of landlord indifference between these choices is determined for each combination of input variables. / Land value and income forecasting models are developed and presented. These models are based on two similar but conceptually different statistical tests. Each test results in different forecasting models which has implications for the use of such models in the future. / Consumption-based asset pricing models are tested using agricultural rental income. These models, although appealing both intuitively and theoretically are found wanting in terms of their formulation as the model results are highly sensitive to the data employed. This concern increases with the level of data aggregation.

This paper examines the association between individual managers and corporate reporting and operating decisions. To examine this question, I develop a dataset of 241 individual CEOs and CFOs, as well as audit committee chairs, covering the period of 1988 to 2009. Although audit committee chairs are tasked with monitoring insiders and not actually preparing the financial results, research suggests that each of these management groups could exert their individual "styles" on the reporting and operating decisions. Using this dataset, I find that each of these groups significantly influence accounting- and non-accounting-based corporate decisions. Also, I examine whether the influence of these individuals is impacted by characteristics of the corporation's operating environment. Using individual proxies for managerial discretion and job demands, as well as developing index measures for each of these constructs, I find that the influence of these particular managers is not impacted by the amount of discretion they have or their perceived job demands. Last, I find evidence that observable demographic measures explain some of the managers' decisions. These results add to the literature concerning the importance of individual managers to corporate decisions because they suggest that managers besides the CFO can significantly influence reporting and operating decisions, and the influence of these managers extends beyond accrual-based techniques to include real activities management decisions.

En el marco de la toma de decisiones bajo incertidumbre se han encontrado desviaciones de la racionalidad en sujetos normales (generalmente universitarios) que son sistemáticas y predecibles. El análisis de las diferencias individuales de estas desviaciones a través de los sujetos implica contextos explícitos e implícitos con características que pueden ser contrapuestas. En el contexto explícito (declarativo) encontramos que la capacidad cognitiva es un factor que reduce la irracionalidad, aunque muy parcialmente. Más importantes parecen ser las disposiciones mentales, unos rasgos de personalidad que pueden sesgar las decisiones. En el contexto implícito (procedimental), la predisposición humana a detectar patrones y reglas, que en general tiene un importante valor de supervivencia, parece generar un tipo de irracionalidad secundaria, que en situaciones especiales puede ponerse en evidencia. Estas situaciones se dan cuando las demandas de la tarea superan las capacidades del sujeto para resolverla. Al estudiar los sistemas cognitivos de control desde un punto de vista neuropsicológico nos encontramos con unos procesos de búsqueda de patrones en la base de los denominados procesos cognitivos superiores. No obstante, esta búsqueda de patrones funciona con una gran autonomía. Hasta tal punto, que llega a interferir con la óptima toma de decisiones. Un ejemplo de ello podría ser el "efecto matching", una estrategia de respuesta que es subóptima en tareas probabilísticas, consistente en responder cada alternativa de respuesta en proporción a su probabilidad de éxito. Se ha conjeturado que el efecto matching se debe a un efecto secundario debido a la búsqueda de patrones o reglas. Como en una tarea probabilística no hay ni patrones ni reglas, su búsqueda dificulta necesariamente el rendimiento óptimo.Sin embargo, aunque algunos autores dan por sentada la mencionada conjetura, y hay una casuística recogida en la literatura, no se ha realizado una investigación sistemática. En cambio, hay interpretaciones que ponen en duda la existencia del efecto mismo. Este efecto podría utilizarse para estudiar de una manera sistemática este tipo de irracionalidad secundaria a la detección de patrones.Por otra parte, al estudiar las consecuencias de un control cognitivo débil o alterado se ha encontrado en la esquizofrenia una inquietante paradoja: parece que realizan con la misma tasa de éxito que los sujetos normales una tarea de toma de decisiones considerada como similar a la toma de decisiones en la vida real: el Iowa Gambling Task. Los sujetos esquizofrénicos, inesperadamente producen también efecto matching. El efecto es superior al del grupo normal, por lo que el rendimiento es peor. Este resultado es paradójico en el sentido de que los pacientes (quienes tienen menos capacidad ejecutiva) parecen ser generadores de reglas, tal como la gente normal con alta capacidad ejecutiva. Los pacientes encuentran reglas y patrones sin la guía de los módulos ejecutivos. Entonces, ¿en qué consiste exactamente la alteración del control cognitivo en la esquizofrenia?Especialmente en el caso esquizofrénico, los resultados muestran una gran complejidad, probablemente debido al solape de diferentes trastornos dentro del grupo esquizofrénico. Mientras que el pensamiento normal podría ser controlado por funciones ejecutivas, el trastorno de pensamiento podría ser controlado por patrones espurios. La disfunción ejecutiva esquizofrénica podría estar compensada, en muchos casos, con el sistema de producción de reglas arbitrarias.

Participation in decision-making and inclusion in the important matters of one’s life are upheld as measures of equality and indicators of the moral status of individuals in liberal democratic societies. To some extent, the status of children in western societies is a contested question, and hence, the nature of children’s contributions to decisions is a matter of debate. Evidence suggests that in spite of an apparent societal commitment to children’s participation in the important matters of their lives, children tend to be excluded from decisions in which they might reasonably be involved. This project investigated the participation of one group of children—chronically ill school-age children— in decisions related to their health care. Adopting interpretive description as methodology, data were collected and analyzed through interviews and participant observation with 31 chronically ill children (ages 7 to 12 years) and their parents, as well as through interviews with health care providers. In this study, children’s participation in health care decisions emerged as a complex activity, deeply embedded in relationship and history. Participation varied within two key domains: children’s opportunities and abilities to formulate and make known their intentions and desires in decisional contexts (the resonance of children’s voices); and the standing achieved by children’s views within decisional processes (the relevance of children’s voices). The interplay of adult authority and children’s agency at the nexus of the resonance and relevance of children’s voices created certain participatory spaces, depicted as moral and social realms variously characterized by children’s silence, children’s tangible expression, adult imposed authority, or adult assumed responsibility. The findings of this study demonstrate a need to re-think our concept of children’s participation, and point to the importance of developing a more relational and contextual understanding of how chronically ill children may contribute to important matters in their lives. The findings also support a view that nurses and other health care providers hold certain responsibilities to critically question the relationships and structures that comprise children’s health care encounters, toward a goal of creating conditions where possibilities for children’s participation are optimized.

Our research proposes a new, multi-attribute, parameterisation of Tversky’s Elimination- By-Aspects (EBA) model. The EBA model conceptualises choice as a covert sequential elimination process with choice probabilities formulated over all consideration sets of the choice set. This specification attempts to capture the effect of context on choice behaviour. However, the EBA model has seen limited usage due to the large number of required parameters given the set of items under study. For a set of items T, it has 2|T| - 3 free parameters, which is infeasible for all but the simplest of contexts. To provide a practical operationalisation, we impose a set of a priori constraints on the parameter space. We define a generic multi-attribute structure to the set of aspects. This restricts the cardinality of the set of unknown scale values while retaining the functional (recursive) form of the model. The EBA hypothesis of a population of lexicographic decision-makers can therefore be tested in more market-realistic contexts, and inferences made over a large universal set of items described by the complete factorial. We call this model the Multi-attribute Elimination-By-Aspects (MEBA) model. The MEBA model reduces the set of unknown free parameters to a maximum of |T|-1. We develop a general algebraic expression for the MEBA choice probabilities as a function of the attributes of the options in the choice set. This enables the derivation of a likelihood function, and consequently maximum likelihood estimation. We also consider the form of optimal MEBA paired comparison designs. Using Monte Carlo simulation and a discrete choice experiment with consumers, we conduct an initial empirical test of the model against the special case of the MNL model (that assumes no context effects) and find the MEBA model to be a better approximation of observed choice behaviour. This is achieved on a common set of parameters, and so it is due solely to the difference in functional form of the two models. We conclude with a discussion on future research directions, in particular the introduction of heterogeneity into the model, and the description of optimal choice experiments for larger choice set sizes.

Our research proposes a new, multi-attribute, parameterisation of Tversky’s Elimination- By-Aspects (EBA) model. The EBA model conceptualises choice as a covert sequential elimination process with choice probabilities formulated over all consideration sets of the choice set. This specification attempts to capture the effect of context on choice behaviour. However, the EBA model has seen limited usage due to the large number of required parameters given the set of items under study. For a set of items T, it has 2|T| - 3 free parameters, which is infeasible for all but the simplest of contexts. To provide a practical operationalisation, we impose a set of a priori constraints on the parameter space. We define a generic multi-attribute structure to the set of aspects. This restricts the cardinality of the set of unknown scale values while retaining the functional (recursive) form of the model. The EBA hypothesis of a population of lexicographic decision-makers can therefore be tested in more market-realistic contexts, and inferences made over a large universal set of items described by the complete factorial. We call this model the Multi-attribute Elimination-By-Aspects (MEBA) model. The MEBA model reduces the set of unknown free parameters to a maximum of |T|-1. We develop a general algebraic expression for the MEBA choice probabilities as a function of the attributes of the options in the choice set. This enables the derivation of a likelihood function, and consequently maximum likelihood estimation. We also consider the form of optimal MEBA paired comparison designs. Using Monte Carlo simulation and a discrete choice experiment with consumers, we conduct an initial empirical test of the model against the special case of the MNL model (that assumes no context effects) and find the MEBA model to be a better approximation of observed choice behaviour. This is achieved on a common set of parameters, and so it is due solely to the difference in functional form of the two models. We conclude with a discussion on future research directions, in particular the introduction of heterogeneity into the model, and the description of optimal choice experiments for larger choice set sizes.

Our research proposes a new, multi-attribute, parameterisation of Tversky’s Elimination- By-Aspects (EBA) model. The EBA model conceptualises choice as a covert sequential elimination process with choice probabilities formulated over all consideration sets of the choice set. This specification attempts to capture the effect of context on choice behaviour. However, the EBA model has seen limited usage due to the large number of required parameters given the set of items under study. For a set of items T, it has 2|T| - 3 free parameters, which is infeasible for all but the simplest of contexts. To provide a practical operationalisation, we impose a set of a priori constraints on the parameter space. We define a generic multi-attribute structure to the set of aspects. This restricts the cardinality of the set of unknown scale values while retaining the functional (recursive) form of the model. The EBA hypothesis of a population of lexicographic decision-makers can therefore be tested in more market-realistic contexts, and inferences made over a large universal set of items described by the complete factorial. We call this model the Multi-attribute Elimination-By-Aspects (MEBA) model. The MEBA model reduces the set of unknown free parameters to a maximum of |T|-1. We develop a general algebraic expression for the MEBA choice probabilities as a function of the attributes of the options in the choice set. This enables the derivation of a likelihood function, and consequently maximum likelihood estimation. We also consider the form of optimal MEBA paired comparison designs. Using Monte Carlo simulation and a discrete choice experiment with consumers, we conduct an initial empirical test of the model against the special case of the MNL model (that assumes no context effects) and find the MEBA model to be a better approximation of observed choice behaviour. This is achieved on a common set of parameters, and so it is due solely to the difference in functional form of the two models. We conclude with a discussion on future research directions, in particular the introduction of heterogeneity into the model, and the description of optimal choice experiments for larger choice set sizes.

Thesis (M.H.A.)--University of Michigan, 1971.