IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/oropre/v41y1993i5p864-879.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Decision Analysis with Incomplete Utility and Probability Information

Author

Listed:
  • Herbert Moskowitz

    (Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana)

  • Paul V. Preckel

    (Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana)

  • Aynang Yang

    (Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana)

Abstract

An approach to the solution of decision analysis problems under uncertainty with imprecise and incomplete information is presented. The methodology is designed for cases in which payoffs (conditional on the state of nature) are known precisely, but only limited or imprecise probability and utility information is available regarding a decision maker's beliefs and tastes. A decision maker provides: conditional payoffs, (optionally) bounds on state probabilities, bounds on the certainty equivalent for a simple lottery, any known relationships between probabilities of states of nature, and a series of strict preferences between pairs of vectors of conditional payoffs. We assume an exponential utility function with unknown parameter. The method proceeds by sequentially eliciting preferences, new bounds on probabilities and/or the certainty equivalent, and new relationships among probabilities until the problem is solved. The methodology is demonstrated through a two-state and a three-state example which illustrate the effects of the progressive elicitation of additional information.

Suggested Citation

  • Herbert Moskowitz & Paul V. Preckel & Aynang Yang, 1993. "Decision Analysis with Incomplete Utility and Probability Information," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 41(5), pages 864-879, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:41:y:1993:i:5:p:864-879
    DOI: 10.1287/opre.41.5.864
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/opre.41.5.864
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/opre.41.5.864?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ahn, Byeong Seok & Park, Haechurl, 2014. "Establishing dominance between strategies with interval judgments of state probabilities," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 53-59.
    2. Borgonovo, Emanuele & Tonoli, Fabio, 2014. "Decision-network polynomials and the sensitivity of decision-support models," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 239(2), pages 490-503.
    3. Pivato, Marcus, 2013. "Multiutility representations for incomplete difference preorders," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 66(3), pages 196-220.
    4. F. Ben Abdelaziz & P. Lang & R. Nadeau, 1999. "Dominance and Efficiency in Multicriteria Decision under Uncertainty," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 191-211, December.
    5. Vilkkumaa, Eeva & Liesiö, Juuso & Salo, Ahti & Ilmola-Sheppard, Leena, 2018. "Scenario-based portfolio model for building robust and proactive strategies," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 266(1), pages 205-220.
    6. J. C. Moore & H. Raghav Rao & A. B. Whinston, 1997. "Experimental Strategies for Preference Information Acquisition: A Lattice Path Treatment," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 139-158, March.
    7. Salvatore Corrente & Salvatore Greco & Roman Słowiński, 2017. "Handling imprecise evaluations in multiple criteria decision aiding and robust ordinal regression by n-point intervals," Fuzzy Optimization and Decision Making, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 127-157, June.
    8. Dias, Luis C. & Vetschera, Rudolf, 2019. "On generating utility functions in Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 278(2), pages 672-685.
    9. Podinovski, Vladislav V., 2014. "Decision making under uncertainty with unknown utility function and rank-ordered probabilities," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 239(2), pages 537-541.
    10. Tao Huang & J. Eric Bickel, 2019. "Sparse Probability Assessment Heuristic Based on Orthogonal Matching Pursuit," Decision Analysis, INFORMS, vol. 16(4), pages 281-300, December.
    11. Liesiö, Juuso & Xu, Peng & Kuosmanen, Timo, 2020. "Portfolio diversification based on stochastic dominance under incomplete probability information," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 286(2), pages 755-768.
    12. Liesiö, Juuso & Salo, Ahti, 2012. "Scenario-based portfolio selection of investment projects with incomplete probability and utility information," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 217(1), pages 162-172.
    13. Liesiö, Juuso & Kallio, Markku & Argyris, Nikolaos, 2023. "Incomplete risk-preference information in portfolio decision analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(3), pages 1084-1098.
    14. Xu, Peng, 2024. "Testing out-of-sample portfolio performance using second-order stochastic dominance constrained optimization approach," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 95(PA).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:41:y:1993:i:5:p:864-879. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.