Decision Economics In The Tradition Of Herbert A Simons Heritage

The special session on Decision Economics (DECON) is a scientific forum held annually and intended to share ideas, projects, research results, models and experiences associated with the complexity of behavioural decision processes and socio‐economic phenomena. DECON 2017 was held at the Polytechnic of Porto, ISEP, Portugal, as part of the 14th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence. For the second consecutive year, the Editors of this book have drawn inspiration from Herbert A. Simon’s immense body of work and argue that Simon precipitated something akin to a revolution in microeconomics focused on the concept of decision‐making. Further, it is worth noting that the recognition of relevant decision‐making takes place in a range of critical subject areas and research fields, including economics, finance, information systems, small and international business management, operations, and production. Therefore, decision‐making issues are of fundamental importance in all branches of economics addressed both deductively and inductively. Not surprisingly, the study of decision‐making has seen growing empirical research efforts in the economic literature over the last sixty years and, more recently, a variety of insightful cutting‐edge experimental, behavioural and computational approaches. Additionally, the awareness regarding generalizations and reductions to express economic concepts has led, on the one hand, to an increasing risk of spreading the language of mathematics as a rhetorical tool and, on the other hand, to an oversimplification and overlooking of some crucial details, especially when it comes to human decisions and, hence, economic behaviour. That awareness, however, has helped to produce an extraordinary volume of empirical research aimed at discovering how economic agents cope with complex decisions. In this sense, the international scientific community acknowledges Herbert A. Simon’s research endeavours to understand the processes involved in economic decision‐making and their implications for the advancement of economic professions. Within the field of decision‐making, indeed, Simon’s rejection of the standard decision‐making models used in neoclassical economics inspired social scientists worldwide to develop research programmes in order to study decision‐making empirically. The main achievements concern decision‐making for individuals, firms, markets, governments, institutions, and, last but not least, science and research.

The special session Decision Economics (DECON) 2016 is a scientific forum by which to share ideas, projects, researches results, models and experiences associated with the complexity of behavioral decision processes aiming at explaining socio-economic phenomena. DECON 2016 held in the University of Seville, Spain, as part of the 13th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence (DCAI) 2016. In the tradition of Herbert A. Simon’s interdisciplinary legacy, this book dedicates itself to the interdisciplinary study of decision-making in the recognition that relevant decision-making takes place in a range of critical subject areas and research fields, including economics, finance, information systems, small and international business, management, operations, and production. Decision-making issues are of crucial importance in economics. Not surprisingly, the study of decision-making has received a growing empirical research efforts in the applied economic literature over the last sixty years. The recognition of the oversimplification and limitations of subjective expected utility theory has produced an extraordinary volume of empirical research aimed at discovering how economic agents cope with complexity. In the centenary of his birth, the international scientific community acknowledges Herbert A. Simon’s research endeavors aimed to understand the processes involved in economic decision-making and their implications for the advancement of economic studies. Within the field of decision-making, Simon’s rejection of standard decision-making models of neoclassical economics inspired social scientists worldwide to develop research programs in order to study decision-making empirically. The main achievements regarded decision-making for individual, firms, markets, governments and institution. There are many scholars in the world that claim that Herbert A. Simon has precipitated something like a revolution in microeconomics focused on the concept of decision-making. Among these scholars are the Editors of this book who believe that very few scientists produce seminal work in more than one field: Herbert A. Simon was one of them, that caliber of genius.

The special session on Decision Economics (DECON) is a scientific forum held annually, which is focused on sharing ideas, projects, research results, models, and experiences associated with the complexity of behavioural decision processes and socio-economic phenomena. In 2018, DECON was held at Campus Tecnológico de la Fábrica de Armas, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Toledo, Spain, as part of the 15th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence. For the third consecutive year, this book have drawn inspiration from Herbert A. Simon's interdisciplinary legacy and, in particular, is devoted to designs, models, and techniques for boundedly rational decisions, involving several fields of study and expertise. It is worth noting that the recognition of relevant decision-making takes place in a range of critical subject areas and research fields, including economics, finance, information systems, small and international business management, operations, and production. Therefore, decision-making issues are of fundamental importance in all branches of economics addressed with different methodological approaches. As a matter of fact, the study of decision-making has become the focus of intense research efforts, both theoretical and applied, forming a veritable bridge between theory and practice as well as science and business organisations, whose pillars are based on insightful cutting-edge experimental, behavioural, and computational approaches on the one hand, and celebrating the value of science as well as the close relationship between economics and complexity on the other. In this respect, the international scientific community acknowledges Herbert A. Simon's research endeavours to understand the processes involved in economic decision-making and their implications for the advancement of economic professions. Within the field of decision-making, indeed, Simon has become a mainstay of bounded rationality and satisficing. His rejection of the standard (unrealistic) decision-making models adopted by neoclassical economists inspired social scientists worldwide with the purpose to develop research programmes aimed at studying decision-making empirically, experimentally, and computationally. The main achievements concern decision-making for individuals, firms, markets, governments, institutions, and, last but not least, science and research. This book of selected papers tackles these issues that Simon broached in a professional career spanning more than sixty years. The Editors of this book dedicated it to Herb.

In this candid and witty autobiography, Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon looks at his distinguished and varied career, continually asking himself whether (and how) what he learned as a scientist helps to explain other aspects of his life. A brilliant polymath in an age of increasing specialization, Simon is one of those rare scholars whose work defines fields of inquiry. Crossing disciplinary lines in half a dozen fields, Simon's story encompasses an explosion in the information sciences, the transformation of psychology by the information-processing paradigm, and the use of computer simulation for modeling the behavior of highly complex systems. Simon's theory of bounded rationality led to a Nobel Prize in economics, and his work on building machines that think—based on the notion that human intelligence is the rule-governed manipulation of symbols—laid conceptual foundations for the new cognitive science. Subsequently, contrasting metaphors of the maze (Simon's view) and of the mind (neural nets) have dominated the artificial intelligence debate. There is also a warm account of his successful marriage and of an unconsummated love affair, letters to his children, columns, a short story, and political and personal intrigue in academe.

Annotation The book presents state-of-the-art knowledge about decision-making support systems (DMSS). Its main goals are to provide a compendium of quality chapters on decision-making support systems that help diffuse scarce knowledge about effective methods and strategies for successfully designing, developing, implementing, and evaluating decision-making support systems, and to create an awareness among readers about the relevance of decision-making support systems in the current complex and dynamic management environment.

What can reason (or more broadly, thinking) do for us and what can't it do? This is the question examined by Herbert A. Simon, who received the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences "for his pioneering work on decision-making processes in economic organizations." The ability to apply reason to the choice of actions is supposed to be one of the defining characteristics of our species. In the first two chapters, the author explores the nature and limits of human reason, comparing and evaluating the major theoretical frameworks that have been erected to explain reasoning processes. He also discusses the interaction of thinking and emotion in the choice of our actions. In the third and final chapter, the author applies the theory of bounded rationality to social institutions and human behavior, and points out the problems created by limited attention span human inability to deal with more than one difficult problem at a time. He concludes that we must recognize the limitations on our capabilities for rational choice and pursue goals that, in their tentativeness and flexibility, are compatible with those limits.

Essays that pay tribute to the wide-ranging influence of the late Herbert Simon, by friends and colleagues. Herbert Simon (1916-2001), in the course of a long and distinguished career in the social and behavioral sciences, made lasting contributions to many disciplines, including economics, psychology, computer science, and artificial intelligence. In 1978 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his research into the decision-making process within economic organizations. His well-known book The Sciences of the Artificial addresses the implications of the decision-making and problem-solving processes for the social sciences. This book (the title is a variation on the title of Simon's autobiography, Models of My Life) is a collection of short essays, all original, by colleagues from many fields who felt Simon's influence and mourn his loss. Mixing reminiscence and analysis, the book represents "a small acknowledgment of a large debt." Each of the more than forty contributors was asked to write about the one work by Simon that he or she had found most influential. The editors then grouped the essays into four sections: "Modeling Man," "Organizations and Administration," "Modeling Systems," and "Minds and Machines." The contributors include such prominent figures as Kenneth Arrow, William Baumol, William Cooper, Gerd Gigerenzer, Daniel Kahneman, David Klahr, Franco Modigliani, Paul Samuelson, and Vernon Smith. Although they consider topics as disparate as "Is Bounded Rationality Unboundedly Rational?" and "Personal Recollections from 15 Years of Monthly Meetings," each essay is a testament to the legacy of Herbert Simon—to see the unity rather than the divergences among disciplines.

"'The Cult of the Market: Economic Fundamentalism and its Discontents' disputes the practical value of the shallow, all-encompassing, dogmatic, economic fundamentalism espoused by policy elites in recent public policy debates, along with their gross simplifications and sacred rules. Economics cannot provide a convincing overarching theory of government action or of social action more generally. Furthermore, mainstream economics fails to get to grips with the economic system as it actually operates. It advocates a more overtly experimental, eclectic and pragmatic approach to policy development which takes more seriously the complex, interdependent, evolving nature of society and the economy. Importantly, it is an outlook that recognises the pervasive influence of asymmetries of wealth, power and information on bargaining power and prospects throughout society. The book advocates a major reform of the teaching of economics"--Provided by publisher.