Customer Reviews

Decisions with Multiple Objectives: Preferences and Value Tradeoffs

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a very good book grounded in solid microeconomic theory foundations. It starts with classical micro theory such as preferences and axioms, and it moves on to risky preferences and methods on how to retrieve them by constructing careful experiments. It also discusses the limitations on preference retrieval by such axiomatic methods due to the heuristics and biases that occur in decision making behaviour. However, this book is also useful for non-economists, as it describes decision making theories and applied methods on how to retrieve preferences in fields such as policy and medical sciences. The book's target market is mostly economics/ decision sciences graduate students or those who have achieved a comparable or higher level of their studies/work experience. It has also very instructive real world examples of PhD students running preference retrieval experiments and reporting their results. Good book for those keen on the subject. The 1976 version of the book has won a book prize, hence the assurance of quality. Furthermore, Raiffa is a well established Harvard academic, which further lends credence to the book.

This book is a very good foundation of MCDA (Multi Criteria Decision Analysis) with all the mathematical proofs behind the theory. The authors give real life examples on the application of their model and explain the intuition of their methodology.

Although the math is a bit advanced, the authors explain step-by-step all the terminology, what makes the theory easily understandable. I have used it as a reference in a course of my M.Sc. in Operations Research and Decisions, but I believe undergraduates can understand it (not without sweating a few drops).

Personally, I believe that Keeney's book "Value Focused thinking" is more intuitive and day-to-day oriented, but the bulk of the theory is presented in this earlier book. So if you like math and economics, you should try this book first.

I've read through this book several times and it's one of those you just keep going back to. I first had practical experience with it applying some of the techniques of value and preference capture to support a software system being built. I've since used it in grain purchasing and merchandising and elevator design where values and tradeoffs among mutiple performance factors are important. I would personally recommend it for anyone climbing the corporate ladder. It just makes your thinking better and more organized and it's great for defending your own rationality in the face of pressure to conform and to organize muddle-headed group think.