Fuzzy Sets In Business Management Finance And Economics

This book collects fifteen papers published in s Special Issue of Mathematics titled "Fuzzy Sets in Business Management, Finance, and Economics", which was published in 2021. These paper cover a wide range of different tools from Fuzzy Set Theory and applications in many areas of Business Management and other connected fields. Specifically, this book contains applications of such instruments as, among others, Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis, Neuro-Fuzzy Methods, the Forgotten Effects Algorithm, Expertons Theory, Fuzzy Markov Chains, Fuzzy Arithmetic, Decision Making with OWA Operators and Pythagorean Aggregation Operators, Fuzzy Pattern Recognition, and Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets. The papers in this book tackle a wide variety of problems in areas such as strategic management, sustainable decisions by firms and public organisms, tourism management, accounting and auditing, macroeconomic modelling, the evaluation of public organizations and universities, and actuarial modelling. We hope that this book will be useful not only for business managers, public decision-makers, and researchers in the specific fields of business management, finance, and economics but also in the broader areas of soft mathematics in social sciences. Practitioners will find methods and ideas that could be fruitful in current management issues. Scholars will find novel developments that may inspire further applications in the social sciences.

Since the publication of Lotfi A. Zadeh's seminal paper "Fuzzy Sets" in 1965 within the journal Information and Control, there has been constant growth in the theoretical developments and practical applications of fuzzy set theory and related mathematical tools. These tools have been applied widely, both by industry and academic research, to decision-making and economics due to their versatility. On the one hand, they can efficiently represent and handle uncertain and vague information such as subjective judgements, non-precise observations on variables, or ill-defined relations between variables. On the other hand, they make implementing computations or identifying patterns in data much easier. To do so, fuzzy set theory provides a lot of mathematical techniques in fields such as fuzzy data analysis, fuzzy multiple criteria decision making, fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis or fuzzy expert systems. Business management, decision-making, or the evaluation of public policies are some examples of practical applications in these fields. This Special Issue has provided a platform for researchers from academia and industry to present their novel works in the domain of applied developments of fuzzy sets and related methodologies for business, financial, and economic analysis. We hope that these results will help to foster future research in the fields of economics and social sciences.

The rapid changes that have taken place globally on the economic, social and business fronts characterized the 20th century. The magnitude of these changes has formed an extremely complex and unpredictable decision-making framework, which is difficult to model through traditional approaches. The main purpose of this book is to present the most recent advances in the development of innovative techniques for managing the uncertainty that prevails in the global economic and management environments. These techniques originate mainly from fuzzy sets theory. However, the book also explores the integration of fuzzy sets with other decision support and modeling disciplines, such as multicriteria decision aid, neural networks, genetic algorithms, machine learning, chaos theory, etc. The presentation of the advances in these fields and their real world applications adds a new perspective to the broad fields of management science and economics.

This is truly an interdisciplinary book for knowledge workers in business, finance, management and socio-economic sciences based on fuzzy logic. It serves as a guide to and techniques for forecasting, decision making and evaluations in an environment involving uncertainty, vagueness, impression and subjectivity. Traditional modeling techniques, contrary to fuzzy logic, do not capture the nature of complex systems especially when humans are involved. Fuzzy logic uses human experience and judgement to facilitate plausible reasoning in order to reach a conclusion. Emphasis is on applications presented in the 27 case studies including Time Forecasting for Project Management, New Product Pricing, and Control of a Parasit-Pest System.

Fuzzy Sets in the Management of Uncertainty presents an overview of current problems in business management, primarily for those situations involving decision making of an economic-financial nature. The monograph therefore discusses problems of planning, programming, control and brings light to the entire financial network in its three phases: raising funds, analysis and investment. Special attention is paid to production processes and marketing of products and services. This monograph is a highly readable overview and introduction for scientists, professionals, graduate students, managers and consultants in the growing field of applications and fuzzy logic in the field of management.

Fuzzy Sets and Economics presents a clear and concise introduction to fuzzy mathematics and demonstrates its adaptability to the analysis of oligopolistic competition. In particular, the author indicates how the economic evaluation of non-cooperative oligopoly markets is changed when fuzzy set mathematics is used. The neo-classical view that oligopolistic competition is inefficient is shown only to apply in the short run while policy matters, such as antitrust, and some basic economic fundamentals, such as the supply-demand paradigm, are affected by the introduction of a fuzzy mathematics framework.

Fuzzy set approaches are suitable to use when the modeling of human knowledge is necessary and when human evaluations are needed. Fuzzy set theory is recognized as an important problem modeling and solution technique. It has been studied ext- sively over the past 40 years. Most of the early interest in fuzzy set theory pertained to representing uncertainty in human cognitive processes. Fuzzy set theory is now - plied to problems in engineering, business, medical and related health sciences, and the natural sciences. This book handles the fuzzy cases of classical engineering e- nomics topics. It contains 15 original research and application chapters including different topics of fuzzy engineering economics. When no probabilities are available for states of nature, decisions are given under uncertainty. Fuzzy sets are a good tool for the operation research analyst facing unc- tainty and subjectivity. The main purpose of the first chapter is to present the role and importance of fuzzy sets in the economic decision making problem with the literature review of the most recent advances.

The book aims at surveying results in the application of fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic to economics and engineering. New results include fuzzy non-linear regression, fully fuzzified linear programming, fuzzy multi-period control, fuzzy network analysis, each using an evolutionary algorithm; fuzzy queuing decision analysis using possibility theory; fuzzy differential equations; fuzzy difference equations; fuzzy partial differential equations; fuzzy eigenvalues based on an evolutionary algorithm; fuzzy hierarchical analysis using an evolutionary algorithm; fuzzy integral equations. Other important topics covered are fuzzy input-output analysis; fuzzy mathematics of finance; fuzzy PERT (project evaluation and review technique). No previous knowledge of fuzzy sets is needed. The mathematical background is assumed to be elementary calculus.