"Stafford Beer is undoubtedly among the world's most provocative, creative, and profound thinkers on the subject of management, and he records his thinking with a flair that is unmatched. His writing is as much art as it is science. He is the most viable system I know." Dr Russell L Ackoff, The Institute for Interactive Management, Pennsylvania, USA. "If . anyone can make it [Operations Research] understandably readable and positively interesting it is Stafford Beer . everyone in management . should be grateful to him for using clear and at times elegant English and . even elegant diagrams." The Economist This is the second edition of a book which has already become a management 'standard' both in universities and on the bookshelves of managers and their advisers. Brain of the Firm develops an account of the firm based upon insights derived from the study of the human nervous system, and is a basic text from the author's theory of viable systems. Despite the neurophysiology, the book is written for managers to understand. The companion volume to this book is The Heart of Enterprise, which is intended to support and complement this text. "Stafford Beer's works represent required reading for everyone who believes that a capacity for rigorous thinking is an essential attribute of today's successful managers and administrators. Brain of the Firm shows a first-rate intellect at work and provides concepts, models and inspiration for both practitioners and teachers." Sir Douglas Hague, CBE

Ellsberg elaborates on "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms" and mounts a powerful challenge to the dominant theory of rational decision in this book.

After every crisis economists and policy analysts ask: can better models help prevent or ameliorate such situations? This book provides an answer. Yes, quantitative models can help if we remember that they are rough approximations to a vastly more complex reality. Models can help if we include realistic but simple representations of uncertainty among our models, and if we retain the pre-eminence of human judgment over the churning of our computers. Info-gap theory is a new method for modeling and managing severe uncertainty. The core of the book presents detailed examples of info-gap analysis of decisions in monetary policy, financial economics, environmental economics for pollution control and climate change, estimation and forecasting. This book is essential reading for economic policy analysts and researchers.

In Decision Making and Rationality in the Modern World, Keith E. Stanovich demonstrates how work in the cognitive psychology of decision making has implications for the large and theoretically contentious debates about the nature of human rationality. Written specifically for undergraduate psychology students, the book presents a very practical approach to decision making, which is too often perceived by students as an artificial set of skills used only in academia and not in the real world. Instead, Stanovich shows how good decision-making procedures support rational behavior that enables people to act most efficiently to fulfill their goals. He explains how the concept of rationality is understood in cognitive science in terms of good decision making and judgment.
Books in the Fundamentals of Cognition series serve as ideal instructional resources for advanced courses in cognitive psychology. They provide an up-to-date, well-organized survey of our current understanding of the major theories of cognitive psychology. The books are concise, which allows instructors to incorporate the latest original research and readings into their courses without overburdening their students. Focused without being too advanced--and comprehensive without being too broad--these books are the perfect resource for both students and instructors.

Many of the complex problems faced by decision makers involve multiple conflicting objectives. This book describes how a confused decision maker, who wishes to make a reasonable and responsible choice among alternatives, can systematically probe his true feelings in order to make those critically important, vexing trade-offs between incommensurable objectives. The theory is illustrated by many real concrete examples taken from a host of disciplinary settings. The standard approach in decision theory or decision analysis specifies a simplified single objective like monetary return to maximise. By generalising from the single objective case to the multiple objective case, this book considerably widens the range of applicability of decision analysis.

Review
"This is a fantastic book. It presents an intelligent, rigorous, and thought-provoking treatment of the theory of choice under uncertainty. The combination of philosophical and mathematical approaches is a treat. Graduate students and professional economists alike have much to learn from this book." - Daron Acemoglu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"This is a beautifully written book that I recommend to anyone who is interested in understanding the 'what,' 'how,' and 'why' of decision theory. The balance between conceptual issues, formalism, and philosophical underpinnings is unique. It will become a standard reference and text." - Larry Epstein, Boston University
"With his seminal works, Itzhak Gilboa is one of the leading figures in the 'neoclassical' decision theory that in the past 20 years has considerably expanded the scope of the classical theory pioneered by de Finetti, Ramsey, Savage, and von Neumann. This book provides a superb and much-needed introduction to this exciting research area." - Massimo Marinacci, Collegio Carlo Alberto, Italy
"At the heart of most economic analysis is a description of how individuals make decisions. There have been fundamental advances in our understanding of decision making in recent years, and this book provides an extremely accessible explanation of the current state of the field. Perhaps more importantly, it lays out the conceptual underpinnings of decision theory: why the various assumptions in modeling decision making are made and how they affect economic predictions." - Andrew Postlewaite, University of Pennsylvania
"Expected utility theory underlies most of statistics, economics, and finance. But are utility functions and probabilities all that we need to formulate wise decisions? And where do utility functions and probabilities come from? Written by the distinguished creator of new decision theories Itzhak Gilboa, Theory of Decision under Uncertainty is a beautifully written critical account of decision theory that answers these and other important questions. Gilboa's work opens doors for both theorists and applied workers." - Thomas Sargent, New York University
Product Description
This book describes the classical axiomatic theories of decision under uncertainty, as well as critiques thereof and alternative theories. It focuses on the meaning of probability, discussing some definitions and surveying their scope of applicability. The behavioral definition of subjective probability serves as a way to present the classical theories, culminating in Savage's theorem. The limitations of this result as a definition of probability lead to two directions - first, similar behavioral definitions of more general theories, such as non-additive probabilities and multiple priors, and second, cognitive derivations based on case-based techniques.