Concepts for Decision Making under Severe Uncertainty with Partial Ordinal and Partial Cardinal Preferences

In mobility markets – especially vehicle for hire markets – drivers offer individual transportation by car to customers. Drivers individually decide where to go to pick up customers to increase their own utilization (probability of carrying a customer) and utility (profit). The utility drivers retrieve from customers comprises both costs of driving to another location and the revenue from carrying a customer and is thus not shared between different drivers. In this thesis, I present the Vehicle for Hire Problem (VFHP) as a generalization of the Kolkata Paise Restaurant Problem (KPRP) to evaluate different strategies for drivers in vehicle for hire markets. The KPRP is a multi-round game model presented by Chakrabarti et al. (2009) in which daily laborers constitute agents and restaurants constitute resources. All agents decide simultaneously, but independently where to eat. Every restaurant can cater only one agent and agents cannot divert to other resources if their first choice is overcrowded. The number of agents equals the number of resources. Also, there is a ranking of restaurants all agents agree upon, and no two resources yield the same utility. The VFHP relaxes assumptions on capacity and utility: Resources (customers) are grouped in districts, agents (drivers) can redirect to other resources in the same district. As the distance between agent and resource reduces the agent’s utility and the location is not identical for all agents, the utility of a given resource is not identical for all agents. To study the impact of the different assumptions, I build four different model variants: Individual Preferences (IP) replaces the shared utility of the KPRP with uniformly distributed utilities per agent. The Mixed Preferences (MP) model variant uses the utility assumption of the VFHP, but the capacity of all districts remains 1. The Individual Preferences with Multiple Customers per District (IPMC) model variant groups customers in districts, and uses the uniform utilities introduced in the IP model variant. Mixed Preferences and Multiple Customers per District (MPMC) implements all assumptions of the VHFP. In this thesis, I study different strategies for the KPRP and all variants of the VFHP to build a foundation for an incentive scheme for dynamic matching in mobility markets. The strategies comprise history-dependent and utility-dependent strategies. In history-dependent strategies, agents incorporate their previous decisions and the utilization of resources in previous iterations in their decision. Agents adapting utility-dependent strategies choose the resource offering the highest utility with a given probability. Keywords: vehicle for hire markets; distributed decision making; agent-based modelling; congestion game; limited rationality

We consider the problem of processing similarity queries over a set of top-k rankings where the query ranking and the similarity threshold are provided at query time. Spear- man's Footrule distance is used to compute the similarity between rankings, considering how well rankings agree on the positions (ranks) of ranked items (i.e., the L1 distance). This setup allows the application of metric index structures such as M- or BK-trees and, alternatively, enables the use of traditional inverted indices for retrieving rankings that overlap (in items) with the query. Although both techniques are reasonable, they come with individual drawbacks for our specific problem. In this paper, we propose a hybrid index- ing strategy, which blends inverted indices and metric space indexing, resulting in a structure that resembles both in- dexing methods with tunable emphasis on one or the other. To find the sweet spot, we propose an assumption-lean but highly accurate (empirically validated) cost model through theoretical analysis. We further present optimizations to the inverted index component, for early termination and mini- mizing bookkeeping. The performance of the proposed al- gorithms, hybrid variants, and competitors is studied in a comprehensive evaluation using real-world benchmark data consisting of Web-search-result rankings and entity rankings based on Wikipedia.

Essays on Market Design and Auction Theory Youngwoo Koh This dissertation consists of three essays on market design and auction theory. In the first chapter, we develop a model of decentralized college admissions in which students’ preferences for colleges are uncertain, and colleges must incur costs when their enrollments exceed their capacities. Colleges’ admission decisions then become a tool for strategic yield management, because the enrollment at a college depends on not only students’ uncertain preferences but also other colleges’ admission decisions. We find that colleges’ equilibrium admission decisions exhibit “strategic targeting”—colleges may forgo admitting (even good) students likely sought after by the others and may admit (not as good) students likely overlooked by the others. Randomization in admissions may also emerge. The resulting assignment fails to be efficient (among students, among colleges and among all parties including colleges and students) and leads to justified envy among students. When the colleges consider multiple dimensions of students merits, their evaluations are unlikely to be perfectly correlated. In such a case, colleges may avoid head-on competition by distorting their evaluation to place excessive weight on less correlated dimensions, such as extra curricular activities and nonacademic aspects of students’ application portfolios. Restricting the number of applications or allowing for wait-listing might alleviate colleges’ yield management problem, but the resulting assignments are still inefficient and admit justified envy. Centralized matching via Gale and Shapley’s Deferred Acceptance algorithm eliminates colleges’ yield management problem and justified envy among students and attains efficiency. It also attains the outcome that is jointly optimal among colleges, but some colleges may be worse off relative to decentralized matching. The second chapter studies a keyword auction model where bidders have constrained budgets. In the absence of budget constraints, Edelman, Ostrovsky, and Schwarz (2007) and Varian (2007) analyze “locally envy-free equilibrium” or “symmetric Nash equilibrium” bidding strategies in generalized second-price (GSP) auctions. However, bidders often have to set their daily budgets when they participate in an auction; once a bidder’s payment reaches his budget, he drops out of the auction. This raises an important strategic issue that has been overlooked in the previous literature: Bidders may change their bids to inflict higher prices on their competitors because under GSP, the per-click price paid by a bidder is the next highest bid. We provide budget thresholds under which equilibria analyzed in Edelman, Ostrovsky, and Schwarz (2007) and Varian (2007) are sustained as “equilibria with budget constraints” in our setting. We then consider a simple environment with one position and two bidders and show that a search engine’s revenue with budget constraints may be larger than its revenue without budget constraints. In the third chapter, we study the procurement of an innovation in which firms exert effort and create innovations, where the quality of innovation is stochastic. Both the effort level and the quality of innovation are unverifiable, and the procurer cannot extract up-front payment from the firms. Given the uncertainty of quality realization, there is a tradeoff regarding the number of participating firms in the procurement process: If many firms participate in the process, they may be discouraged from expending their initial investment because each of them has a small chance of winning (we call this incentive effect). At the same time, as the number of participants increases, the procurer has a growing chance of getting a higher quality because of the randomness of the quality realization (sampling effect). Therefore, the procurer faces a nontrivial problem of how many firms to invite in the procurement process. We consider two prominent contest mechanisms, a first-price auction and a fixed-prize tournament. We show that if the randomness is large enough, it is optimal for the buyer to invite as many firms as possible in both mechanisms, and the fixed-prize tournament outperforms the first-price auction. In the limit at which the randomness vanishes, inviting only two firms is optimal in both mechanisms, and the firstprice auction outperforms the fixed-prize tournament. Under the first-price auction, we show that any equilibrium converges to an equilibrium as the randomness diminishes and provide a characterization of the limit equilibrium. We also provide a constructive example of a mixed-strategy equilibrium with two firms when the randomness is moderate.

The University of Padua conducted a survey to elicit the preferences of its students for new services that the university, the city and local authorities could offer to improve student life before, during and after graduation. In this paper, we present the statistical methodology for ranking services according to students' preferences and discuss the resulting ranks of the services grouped in 10 thematic areas. We conclude that the preference elicitation method and the rank estimation method adopted in our research are appropriate for within- university prioritisation of student services.

We study two-sided matching markets in which participants are initially endowed with partial preference orderings, lacking precise information about their true, strictly ordered list of preferences. We wish to reason about matchings that are stable with respect to agents' true preferences, and which are furthermore optimal for one given side of the market. We present three main results. First, one can decide in polynomial time whether there exists a matching that is stable and optimal under all strict preference orders that refine the given partial orders, and can construct this matching in polynomial time if it does exist. We show, however, that deciding whether a given pair of agents are matched in all or no such optimal stable matchings is co-NP-complete, even under quite severe restrictions on preferences. Finally, we describe a polynomial-time algorithm that decides, given a matching that is stable under the partial preference orderings, whether that matching is stable and optimal for one side of the market under some refinement of the partial orders.

This paper studies the problem of majority-rule-based collective decision-making where the agents' preferences are represented by CP-nets (Conditional Preference Networks). As there are exponentially many alternatives, it is impractical to reason about the individual full rankings over the alternative space and apply majority rule directly. Most existing works either do not consider computational requirements, or depend on a strong assumption that the agents have acyclic CP-nets that are compatible with a common order on the variables. To this end, this paper proposes an efficient SAT-based approach, called MajCP (Majority-rule-based collective decision-making with CP-nets), to compute the majority winning alternatives. Our proposed approach only requires that each agent submit a CP-net; the CP-net can be cyclic, and it does not need to be any common structures among the agents' CP-nets. The experimental results presented in this paper demonstrate that the proposed approach is computationally efficient. It offers several orders of magnitude improvement in performance over a Brute-force algorithm for large numbers of variables.

Subject of this paper are decision situations which can be characterized by a finite set of alternatives from which one good alternative or several satisfactory alternatives have to be chosen by taking into account several criteria.A system of axioms for the description of the decision maker's preferences will be presented, in which only limited compensations between the criteria are allowed.This preference model combines the determination of thresholds and criteria weights and the theory of fuzzy logic.In doing so, both the preference models based on the classicals dominance principle and those of the multiattributive utility theory are extended.Finally, as a generalization of the ELECTRE-I method, a procedure for the determination of decision proposals will be presented and illustrated with its performance in solving a real-world decision Problem.

Participatory evaluation of two improved hybrid sorghum varieties and one respective local sorghum variety with improved and farmers’ management was carried out on six farmers plot in sorghum growing areas of Sekota and Abergele districts of Wag Himra zone in Eastern Amhara. This evaluation was undertaken through farmers’ participation approach by organizing two farmers’ research and Extension Groups (FREG); one per district. FREG members were selected purposively to have 18 and 12 farmers in Sekota and Abergele, respectively; each group consists of households from different social segments with 30% women involvement. The objectives of the study were to provide farmers with a menu of technology options and to assess farmers’ technology preference criteria; thereby, contribute to increase demand driven technology dissemination in sorghum growing areas of Wag Himra. The performance of improved and local varieties have shown significant amount of variability among treatments in both districts. For instance, mean grain yield and maturity date varied from 3.23 to 1.15 t/ha and 91.2 to 136.3 days in Sekota and 2.84 to 1.13 t/ha and 91.8 to 136.3 days in Abergele. Similarly, partial budget analysis result showed that, total net benefit of treatments varied from 20503.9 to 6407.3 birr in Sekota and 12810.6 to 6200.8 birr in Abergele with 4.90 and 1.94 birr marginal rate of return, respectively. Hence, based on the overall weighted ranking matrix comparisons of farmers’, varieties ESH-1 and ESH-2 took first and second places in Sekota and vice-versa in Abergele. Thus, it is safely recommended for promotion and scale-up of these technologies in respective trial districts; while sustainable seed source should be identified through establishing farmers’ seed multiplying cooperatives and/or providing pre basic seeds to seed multiplying enterprises. Key words: Participatory evaluation, farmer preferences, hybrid sorghum, parameters, partial budget analysis.

In this thesis the close relationship between generalized semi-infinite problems (GSIP) and disjunctive problems (DP) is considered. We start with the description of some optimization problems from timber industry and illustrate how GSIPs and DPs arise naturally in that field. Three different applications are reviewed. Next, theory and solution methods for both types of problems are examined. We describe a new possibility to model disjunctive optimization problems as generalized semi-infinite programs. Applying existing lower level reformulations for the obtained semi-infinite program we derive conjunctive nonlinear problems without any logical expressions, which can be locally solved by standard nonlinear solvers. In addition to this local solution procedure we propose a new branch-and-bound framework for global optimization of disjunctive programs. In contrast to the widely used reformulation as a mixed-integer program, we compute the lower bounds and evaluate the logical expression in one step. Thus, we reduce the size of the problem and work exclusively with continuous variables, which is computationally advantageous. In contrast to existing methods in disjunctive programming, none of our approaches expects any special formulation of the underlying logical expression. Where applicable, under slightly stronger assumptions, even the use of negations and implications is allowed. Our preliminary numerical results show that both procedures, the reformulation technique as well as the branch-and-bound algorithm, are reasonable methods to solve disjunctive optimization problems locally and globally, respectively. In the last part of this thesis we propose a new branch-and-bound algorithm for global minimization of box-constrained generalized semi-infinite programs. It treats the inherent disjunctive structure of these problems by tailored lower bounding procedures. Three different possibilities are examined. The first one relies on standard lower bounding procedures from conjunctive global optimization. The second and the third alternative are based on linearization techniques by which we derive linear disjunctive relaxations of the considered sub-problems. Solving these by either mixed-integer linear reformulations or, alternatively, by disjunctive linear programming techniques yields two additional possibilities. Our numerical results on standard test problems with these three lower bounding procedures show the merits of our approach.

An assessment of the robustness of the 2008EPI results requires the evaluation of uncertainties underlying the index and the sensitivity of the country scores and rankings to the methodological choices made during the development of the Index. To test this robustness, the EPI team has continued its partnership with the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission in Ispra, Italy. This JRC report shows that the 2008 EPI has an architecture that highlights the complexity of translating environmental stewardship into straightforward, clear-cut policy recipes. The trade-offs within the index dimensions are a reminder of the danger of compensability between dimensions while identifying the areas where more work is needed to achieve a coherent framework in particular in terms of the relative importance of the indicators that compose the EPI framework. The 2008 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) is developed for 149 countries and is based on 25 indicators in six policy categories: Environmental Health, Air Pollution, Water, Biodiversity and Habitat, Productive Natural Resources, Climate Change. The EPI aims to bring a data-driven, fact-based and empirical approach to environmental protection and global sustainability. The validity of the EPI scoring and respective ranking is assessed by evaluating how sensitive the country ranks are to the assumptions made on the index structure and the aggregation of the 25 underlying indicators. The assumptions tested are: measurement error of the raw data, choice of capping at selected targets for the 25 indicators, choice to correct for skewed distributions in the indicators values, weights of the indicators and/or of the subcomponents of the index, and finally aggregation function at the policy level (six policy categories). How to obtain EU publications Our priced publications are available from EU Bookshop (http://bookshop.europa.eu), where you can place an order with the sales agent of your choice. The Publications Office has a worldwide network of sales agents. You can obtain their contact details by sending a fax to (352) 29 29-42758. The mission of the JRC is to provide customer-driven scientific and technical support for the conception, development, implementation and monitoring of EU policies. As a service of the European Commission, the JRC functions as a reference centre of science and technology for the Union. Close to the policy-making process, it serves the common interest of the Member States, while being independent of special interests, whether private or national. LB -N A -2385-EN -C

The computational method and model of Module of Modeling of Computational Systemic Mind Under Uncertainty is oriented on use as plug-in in systems of Artificial Intelligence, which are characterized by the ability to be self-organized and to operate computationally, intellectually, autonomously, systemically and continuously real time, under uncertainty, in inhomogeneous subject areas, in unknown in advance situations and scenarios of processing, through of perception, extraction, identification, classification, situational fuzzy control and actualizing of relevant unstructured data, information, knowledge, objects, models, processes, graphical and gestural images, extracted from languages and reality, for representation their in corresponding repositories and organizing on their basis of processes of Perception, Reasoning, Systems Thinking and Cognition under uncertainty and Fuzzy Environment, using methods of application of principles of Situational Control and Systems Approach, main aspects of Fuzzy Logic, Linguistics, Computational Mind, Cognitive Science, Artificial Intelligence and developed methods of: (a) Situational Control of data, information, knowledge, objects, models and processes, (b) Perception the reality of environment, (c) Knowledge Representation, Generalization and their Explanation, (d) Fuzzy Inference, (e) Decision making and Planning decisions, (f) Intelligent User Interface, (g) Control of Dialogue, (h) Reasoning and Systems Thinking, and (i) Cognition at whole.

In this dissertation, staging an encounter between the philosophy of unique selfhood proposed by the Italian sexual difference feminist, Adriana Cavarero, and currently predominant Anglo-American theories of subjectivity, I claim a model of selfhood in which self-writing makes what is general about socially- and discursively-constituted identity unique and material. I ground a critique of Cavarero’s development of Hannah Arendt’s distinction between the who and the what of the self through analysis of several self-writings or ‘autographies’, a term H. Porter Abbott advances in order to accommodate readers’ responses to the narrative action that is peculiar to the formal variety of autobiography. Through my discussion of Virginia Woolf’s Moments of Being, Fausta Cialente’s Le quattro ragazze Wieselberger, Gabriella Ghermandi’s Regina di fiori e di perle, Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Joan Didion’s Magical Thinking, Primo Levi’s Se questo e un uomo, Brett Shapiro’s L’intruso, and Timothy Conigrave’s Holding the Man – I claim the significance of reading the who-ness of what-ness, the ways in which selves invest themselves in socially determined categories of identity, uniquely. For Cavarero, ‘postmodernism’ recuperates the metaphysical universalism it criticises by privileging the general ways in which a decentred subject is constituted by her/his membership of shared identity determinants: by what s/he is. Cavarero argues that ‘postmodern’ preference for, and over-determination of, what-ness negates the uniqueness of the self, who s/he is, for who-ness designates what is unrepeatable about the self, what escapes the generality of what-ness. My being Australian, white, gay, middle-class, tertiary-educated, etc. is, for Cavarero, an inventory of things I share with other people, an enumeration of what is general about me. None of these identities is reducible to me, however; none of them, because they can describe many people generally, accounts for my uniqueness. Cavarero’s claim to a philosophy that avoids generality of this kind offers an ontology in which the self is necessarily, dependently, related to others by her/his ‘appearance’ before them, and, importantly, by an altruistic ethic that structures the shared narration of life-stories, the narration of the self by the other. Hers is an invaluable provocation, indebted to the history of il pensiero della differenza sessuale [sexual difference thought] to think the self beyond socially general categories of identity. It is a philosophy that privileges the particularity of the self’s difference, through narration. I argue over the course of my dissertation, however, that Cavarero ignores the unique ways in which selves make particular what she argues is only ever general, irreducible, about them. I claim that Cavarero’s deprioritisation of the what of the self in favour of the who of the self, as well as the autobiographical in favour of the biographical, fails to recognise the significance of ways in which minority identities are invested in their what-ness and its representation and reception; for not having to account for oneself, for one’s what-ness, is a privilege enjoyed only, perhaps, by selves related to what is ideologically of the ‘majority’. Through the questions posed by the texts I discuss, questions of sexual difference and motherhood, ethnicity and belonging, trauma and memory, illness, and sexuality, I formulate a model of selfhood that bridges the who-ness Cavarero so importantly demands philosophical recognition of, and the what-ness she accuses ‘postmodern’ theories of over-determining. I emphasise the common ground between a philosophy rooted in the philosophical practice of il pensiero della differenza sessuale and the fragmented identity of ‘postmodernism’ in order to deepen Cavarero’s provocation to think the uniqueness of the self.

This thesis assesses philosophical arguments in favour of patent systems. These come in both consequentialist and deontological forms, the latter of which are the focus of this analysis. One kind of deontological argument is based on the concept of desert. I argue that on any plausible conception of desert, the patent system fails to distribute rewards as well as viable alternative systems could. The other kind of deontological argument claims that inventors are entitled to patent rights over their inventions as an extension of their natural rights, drawing on a Lockean account of the conditions of legitimate appropriation of unowned goods. After a discussion of the metaphysics of invention, and of the nature of the commons, I argue that Locke's conditions are not in fact always trivially satisfied in the case of patents. Furthermore, entitlement-based arguments conclude that because new inventions are unowned, claiming property rights in them involves only the same moral considerations that would apply in the state of nature. I argue that because we are not in the state of nature, pre-existing property rights also need to be taken into account, which conflict with patents. The broad conclusion of this thesis is that none of the plausible deontological arguments for patent systems are sound. The implication is that any justification of must therefore be made in consequentialist terms; this ultimately rests on strong empirical evidence rather than normative arguments alone.

New Heuristics and Adaptive Memory Procedures for Boolean Optimization Problems, Lars M. Hvattum, Arne Lokketangen, and Fred Glover Convergent Lagrangian Methods for Separable Nonlinear Integer Programming: Objective Level-Cut and Domain-Cut Methods, Duan Li, Xiaoling Sun, and Jun Wang The Generalized Assignment Problem, Robert M. Nauss Decomposition in Integer Linear Programming, Ted K. Ralphs and Matthew V. Galati Airline Scheduling Models and Solution Algorithms for the Temporary Closure of Airports, Shangyao Yan and Chung-Gee Lin Determining an Optimal Fleet Mix and Schedules: Part I - Single Source and Destination, Hanif D. Sherali and Salem M. Al-Yakoob Determining an Optimal Fleet Mix and Schedules: Part II - Multiple Sources and Destinations, and the Option of Leasing Transshipment Depots, Hanif D. Sherali and Salem M. Al-Yakoob An Integer Programming Model for the Optimization of Data Cycle Maps, David Panton, Maria John, and Andrew Mason Application of Column-Generation Techniques to Retail Assortment Planning, Govind P. Daruka and Udatta S. Palekar Noncommercial Software for Mixed-Integer Linear Programming, Jeff T. Linderoth and Ted K. Ralphs

Third-party logistics (3PL) has involved a significant response among researchers and practitioners in the recent decade. In the global competitive scenario, multinational companies (MNCs) not only improve the quality of the service and increase efficiency, but they also decrease costs by means of 3PL. However, the assessment and selection of 3PL is a very critical decision to make, comprising intricacy due to the existence of various imprecisely based criteria. Also, uncertainty is an unavoidable part of information in the decision-making process and its importance in the selection process is relatively high and needs to be carefully considered. Consequently, incomplete and inadequate data or information may occur among other various selection criteria, which can be termed as a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem. Rough numbers are very flexible to model this type of uncertainty occurring in MCDM problems. In this paper, the Hamy Mean (HM) operator and Dombi operations are expanded by rough numbers (RNs) so as to propose the Rough Number Dombi-Hamy Mean (RNDHM) operator. Then, the Multi-Attribute Decision-Making (MADM) model is designed with the RNDHM operator. Finally, the RNDHM is employed to achieve the final ranking of the 3PL providers.