background & purpose: in the health sector, in addition to the important consequence of treatment, health system should meet the expectations regarding the desirability of services. expectations and perceptions of patients about the desirability of services play an important role in selecting hospitals, their loyalty to the organization & replanning to purchase. thus the present study has been ...

In a competitive market, customer decision is made to maximize his utility. It can be assumed that risk of losing a supply chain’s customer can be defined based on products utility from customer point of view. This paper takes account of product price and service level as competition criteria. The proposed model is based on non-cooperative game theory, for one-manufacturer and one-retailer supp...

Agents in the iMatch environment conform to the BeliefDesires-Intention (BDI) agent formalism [5]. An illustration of the internals of an iMatch agent is shown in Figure 1. iMatch agents are situated within an environment. Sensors of the agent converts environmental inputs into representations that can be manipulated within the agent. Effectors translate actions planned by the agent into execut...

'The economic statistics that the government issues every week should come with a warning sticker: User beware. In the midst of the greatest information explosion in history, the government is pumping out a stream of statistics that are nothing but myths and misinformation.' Michael J. Mandel, "The Real Truth about the Economy: Are Government Statistics so much Pulp Fiction? Take a Look," Busin...

The notion of ‘wireheading’, or direct reward centre stimulation of the brain, is a wellknown concept in neuroscience. In this paper, we examine the corresponding issue of reward (utility) function integrity in artificially intelligent machines. We survey the relevant literature and propose a number of potential solutions to ensure the integrity of our artificial assistants. Overall, we conclud...

Recently we used the maximum entropy principle for finding the price density in a multi agent insurance market. The result is similar to what the Buhlmann had obtained by maximizing the utility function. Here we begin with the price density that is derived by applying the maximum entropy principle to a conservative economic system (exchange market), then reverse the Buhlmann calculation to find...

The paper considers a general approach for classifying objects using mathematical programming algorithms. The approach is based on optimizing a utility function, which is quadratic in indicator parameters and is linear in control parameters (which need to be identified). Qualitative characteristics of the utility function, such as monotonicity in some variables, are included using additional co...

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Many mathematical forms of utility functions have been considered in the economics and finance literature, although, as Xie (2000) has said, by far the most widely employed are those displaying constant relative risk aversion (CRRA). Xie pointed out the dangers implicit in an inappropriate assumption of CRRA and the desirability of more flexible utility functions permitting a greater range of r...