In the past, technological as well as economic forces dominated the evolution of industrial structures: these factors have been treated extensively in numerous studies. However, another major factor which has begun to have a decisive influ ence on the performance of the chemical industry is technological risk and public and environmental health considerations, in particular those related to toxic and hazardous substances used in industrial production processes. The issues of con trolling process risk, waste streams, and potential environmental consequences of accidental or routine release of hazardous chemicals are rapidly gaining in impor tance vis CI vis narrow economic considerations, and are increasingly reflected in national and international legislation. In the context of several ongoing R&D projects aiming at the development of a new generation of tools for "intelligent" decision support, two related problem areas that have been identified are: (i) Structuring the industry or plant for the minimum cost of production as well as least risk - e.g., toxicity of chemicals involved. In this multi-criteria framework, we seek to resolve the conflict between industrial structure or plant design established by economic considerations and the one shaped by environmental concerns. This can be formulated as a design problem for nor mal production conditions. In section 3.1. and 3.2. an approach on how to deal with this problem at the industry and plant level is discussed.

Jay Forrester's Economic Dynamics was published in 1971 and The Limits to Growth by Dennis Meadows and his associates appeared a year later. The publication of those two books gave rise to twenty years of intense research into the economics of exhaustible resources, research which everywhere has had a substantial impact both on public debate and on academic curricula. And now, just as that line of research is losing steam, economists are focussing on problems associated with the degradation of the natural environment, problems which call for models which, in their formal structure, are quite similar to those already developed in resource economics. This is therefore an appropriate moment for the appearance of a thorough exposition of the economics of exhaustible resources. For that is what Nguyen Manh Hung and Nguyen Van Quyen have provided. Their splendid new book covers equally well the older Hotelling-inspired theory of cake-eating and the economics of search and R&D designed to uncover new and cheaper sources of supply. It provides an entree to the whole subject of resource economics, as well as many new discoveries which will be of interest to experienced researchers.

This book describes some models from the theory of investment which are mainly characterized by three features. Firstly, the decision-maker acts in a dynamic environment. Secondly, the distributions of the random variables are only incompletely known at the beginning of the planning process. This is termed as decision-making under conditions of uncer tainty. Thirdly, in large parts of the work we restrict the analysis to binary decision models. In a binary model, the decision-maker must choose one of two actions. For example, one decision means to undertake the invest ·ment project in a planning period, whereas the other decision prescribes to postpone the project for at least one more period. The analysis of dynamic decision models under conditions of uncertainty is not a very common approach in economics. In this framework the op timal decisions are only obtained by the extensive use of methods from operations research and from statistics. It is the intention to narrow some of the existing gaps in the fields of investment and portfolio analysis in this respect. This is done by combining techniques that have been devel oped in investment theory and portfolio selection, in stochastic dynamic programming, and in Bayesian statistics. The latter field indicates the use of Bayes' theorem for the revision of the probability distributions of the random variables over time.

The book contains perspectives on the way new information technology might reorient the spatial organization of activity. The perspectives range from conceptual, high- lighting the role of research and development to case studies from Japan. Considerable debate is focused on the role of distance and the way in which new information technology might re-shape interaction and, eventually, the form and function of urban areas.

Think of the following situation: A project yielding a gross profit of 100 is offered to two firms. The project can only be conducted by a cooperation of the two firms. No firm is able to conduct the project alone. In order to receive the project the firms have to agree on the allocation of the gross profit. Each of both firms has an alternative project it conducts in case the joint project is not realized. The profitability of an allocation of the joint gross profit for a firm depends on the gross profit from its alternative project. The gross profit from an alternative project can be either 0 (low alternative value) or O

In each chapter of this volume some specific topics in the econometric analysis of time series data are studied. All topics have in common the statistical inference in linear models with correlated disturbances. The main aim of the study is to give a survey of new and old estimation techniques for regression models with disturbances that follow an autoregressive-moving average process. In the final chapter also several test strategies for discriminating between various types of autocorrelation are discussed. In nearly all chapters it is demonstrated how useful the simple geometric interpretation of the well-known ordinary least squares (OLS) method is. By applying these geometric concepts to linear spaces spanned by scalar stochastic variables, it emerges that well-known as well as new results can be derived in a simple geometric manner, sometimes without the limiting restrictions of the usual derivations, e. g. , the conditional normal distribution, the Kalman filter equations and the Cramer-Rao inequality. The outline of the book is as follows. In Chapter 2 attention is paid to a generalization of the well-known first order autocorrelation transformation of a linear regression model with disturbances that follow a first order Markov scheme. Firstly, the appropriate lower triangular transformation matrix is derived for the case that the disturbances follow a moving average process of order q (MA(q». It turns out that the calculations can be carried out either analytically or in a recursive manner.

Many problems in economics can be formulated as linearly constrained mathematical optimization problems, where the feasible solution set X represents a convex polyhedral set. In practice, the set X frequently contains degenerate verti- ces, yielding diverse problems in the determination of an optimal solution as well as in postoptimal analysis.The so- called degeneracy graphs represent a useful tool for des- cribing and solving degeneracy problems. The study of dege- neracy graphs opens a new field of research with many theo- retical aspects and practical applications. The present pu- blication pursues two aims. On the one hand the theory of degeneracy graphs is developed generally, which will serve as a basis for further applications. On the other hand dege- neracy graphs will be used to explain simplex cycling, i.e. necessary and sufficient conditions for cycling will be de- rived.

During the development of modern probability theory in the 17th cen tury it was commonly held that the attractiveness of a gamble offering the payoffs :1:17 ••• ,:l: with probabilities Pl, . . . , Pn is given by its expected n value L:~ :l:iPi. Accordingly, the decision problem of choosing among different such gambles - which will be called prospects or lotteries in the sequel-was thought to be solved by maximizing the corresponding expected values. The famous St. Petersburg paradox posed by Nicholas Bernoulli in 1728, however, conclusively demonstrated the fact that individuals l consider more than just the expected value. The resolution of the St. Petersburg paradox was proposed independently by Gabriel Cramer and Nicholas's cousin Daniel Bernoulli [BERNOULLI 1738/1954]. Their argument was that in a gamble with payoffs :l:i the decisive factors are not the payoffs themselves but their subjective values u( :l:i)' According to this argument gambles are evaluated on the basis of the expression L:~ U(Xi)pi. This hypothesis -with a somewhat different interpretation of the function u - has been given a solid axiomatic foundation in 1944 by v. Neumann and Morgenstern and is now known as the expected utility hypothesis. The resulting model has served for a long time as the preeminent theory of choice under risk, especially in its economic applications.

In the last decade highly innovatory developments have taken place in theoretical economics. The new focus of interest seems to be twofold: Firstly, nonlinear models for dynamic processes of the economy are constructed to extend the scope of linear models for tlle stationary euqilibrium state; and secondly a new approach is made to solve the everlasting problem of the relation between micro-and macro-economics. The interdisciplinary field of synergetics is deeply involved in this evolution. The author has made a remarkable contribution to both foci: His application of synergetic concepts to the theory of business cycles combines a partial solution of the micro-macro-problem, namely the modelling of the macro-economic effect of the decisions of investors, producers and consumers, with the natural introduction of nonlinearities. The arising new business cycle theory can on the one side be validated by empirical evidence and on the other hand the typical behavior of nonlinear dynamic systems including the transition to deterministic chaos can be clearly demonstrated. The hope is justified that the model presented in this book is a fw·ther important step in reaching a new level of the quantitative comprehension of dynamic phenomena in the economy. Stuttgart, June 1991 Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Weidlich Foreword It is the author's objective to explain macroeconomic processes on the basis of micro economic decision-making behaviour. In order to achieve this goal, the concept of synergetics is presented as a method of describing dynamic phenomena in multi-com ponent systems with cooperative interactions between their elements.

A Silverman game is a two-person zero-sum game defined in terms of two sets S I and S II of positive numbers, and two parameters, the threshold T > 1 and the penalty v > 0. Players I and II independently choose numbers from S I and S II, respectively. The higher number wins 1, unless it is at least T times as large as the other, in which case it loses v. Equal numbers tie. Such a game might be used to model various bidding or spending situations in which within some bounds the higher bidder or bigger spender wins, but loses if it is overdone. Such situations may include spending on armaments, advertising spending or sealed bids in an auction. Previous work has dealt mainly with special cases. In this work recent progress for arbitrary discrete sets S I and S II is presented. Under quite general conditions, these games reduce to finite matrix games. A large class of games are completely determined by the diagonal of the matrix, and it is shown how the great majority of these appear to have unique optimal strategies. The work is accessible to all who are familiar with basic noncooperative game theory.