Efficiency versus Sustainability in Dynamic Decision Making: Advances in Intertemporal CompromisingTo all who taught me, and to all who will. Over the past fifteen years the notions of efficiency and sustainability have, more than any others, influenced the academic and public discussion concerning the intertemporal allocation of resources, especially as regards the economics of growth and environment. This treatise formally develops and counterposes these notions by means of the construct of a trajectorial objective, which is here developed, along with its implications, as a natural advance upon the classical scalar objective. In the course of this study it becomes clear that efficiency and sustainability are by no means identical, given that efficiency, on the one hand, is the concept for avoiding wasteful behavior, and sustainability, on the other, is the concept for ensuring that certain critical aspiration levels, which usually reflect the wish for survival, are maintained. Nonetheless, contrary to what may be assumed, these two concepts do not generally yield mutually exclusive solutions; in fact, they can be combined to complement each other in the quest for unimprovable long-term solutions which sustain given and necessary aspiration levels. This treatise develops and analyzes dynamic decision models (DDM) with one trajectorial objective according to the methodology of multi criteria decision making (MCDM). Moreover, introducing the method of distance maximization crucially augments MCDM and proves to be invaluable for DDMs in the case of a nonexistent utopia trajectory as well as in the case of sustainability as objective. |
Contents
1 Introduction | 1 |
2 Fundamentals of Decision Making | 7 |
3 Fundamentals of Multicriteria | 21 |
4 Fundamentals of Dynamic | 77 |
42 Basic Types of Objectives in Dynamic Decision Making | 89 |
tive22 Picking one of the paths with this kind of | 106 |
7n | 140 |
7 Multiple Objectives in Dynamic | 191 |
8 Concluding Remarks | 225 |
List of Figures | 229 |
Symbols and Notation | 231 |
Bibliography | 235 |
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Efficiency versus Sustainability in Dynamic Decision Making: Advances in ... Bodo Glaser Limited preview - 2012 |
Common terms and phrases
AB-efficient applied aspiration level aspiration value Cgold Chapter CMws compromise functional compromise methods compromise model compromise-optimal cone DEP constraints consumption trajectory continuous-time formulation control trajectories control variables convex cone DDMAXB decision maker decision problem decision theory definition DINKELBACH DINKELBACH/KLEINE 1996 discrete-time discrete-time formulation distance function dominance cones dynamic decision model dynamically efficient economics efficient objective efficient with respect equation of motion example feasible Figure implies individual optimum instance intertemporal conflict isoquants jectories kgold kmax MIETTINEN 1999 minimization multiple objectives nadir point objective functional objective set objective space objective trajectories objective-function value objective-function vectors Optimal Control optimal solution parameter period planning horizon Robinson satisficing objective scalar objective set of alternatives strongly monotonically sustainability system dynamics Theorem tive trajec trajectorial objective Type B objective utopia point utopia trajectory vector optimization model weakly efficient weighted sum WIERZBICKI Xeff Xsust yield Z(VOM Zeff