This book presents some of the most important concepts in noncooperative games and cooperative games and introduces as well the latest advances in the new field of game theory in fuzzy and multiobjective environments. Several game representations and solution concepts are introduced which take the amgiguity and the multiplicity of objectives into consideration. The book also demonstrates the computational methods applied for obtaining the solutions. The reader can learn much about fuzzy and multiobjective games for conflict resolution in most realistic settings without prior mathematical sophistication.

Decision makers in managerial and public organizations often encounter de cision problems under conflict or competition, because they select strategies independently or by mutual agreement and therefore their payoffs are then affected by the strategies of the other decision makers. Their interests do not always coincide and are at times even completely opposed. Competition or partial cooperation among decision makers should be considered as an essen tial part of the problem when we deal with the decision making problems in organizations which consist of decision makers with conflicting interests. Game theory has been dealing with such problems and its techniques have been used as powerful analytical tools in the resolution process of the decision problems. The publication of the great work by J. von Neumann and O. Morgen stern in 1944 attracted attention of many people and laid the foundation of game theory. We can see remarkable advances in the field of game theory for analysis of economic situations and a number of books in the field have been published in recent years. The aim of game theory is to specify the behavior of each player so as to optimize the interests of the player. It then recommends a set of solutions as strategies so that the actions chosen by each decision maker (player) lead to an outcome most profitable for himself or her self.

The only book on games in both fuzzy and multiobjective environments With applications to managerial and public decision-making problems

Autorentext

Masatoshi Sakawa was born in Matsuyama, Japan, on 11 August l947. He received B.E., M.E., and D.E. degrees in applied mathematics and physics at Kyoto University in 1970, 1972, and 1975, respectively. From 1975 he was with Kobe University where, since 1981, he was an Associate Professor in the Department of Systems Engineering. From l987 to 1990 he was a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Iwate University. At present he is a Professor at Hiroshima University and is working with the Department of Arti cial Complex Systems Engineering in the Graduate School of Engineering. He was an Honorary Visiting Professor at University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), Computation Department, sponsored by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) from March to December 1991. He was also a Visiting Professor at the Kyoto Institute of Economic Research, Kyoto University from April l991 to March l992. His research and teaching activities are in the area of systems engineering, especially mathematical optimization, multiobjective decision making, fuzzy mathematical programming and game theory. In addition to over 300 articles in National and International Journals, he is an author and coauthor of 6 books in English and 14 books in Japanese, including the Springer titles Genetic Algorithms and Fuzzy Multiobjective Optimization; Fuzzy Sets and Interactive Multiobjective Optimization; Large-Scale Interactive Fuzzy Multiobjective Programming: Decomposition Approaches; and, with Nishizaki, Fuzzy and Multiobjective Games for Conflict Resolution. Hitoshi Yano is with the Department of Social Sciences, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nagoya City University. Ichiro Nishizaki received B.E. and M.E. degrees in systems engineering at Kobe University in 1982 and 1984, respectively, and he received the D.E. degree from Hiroshima University in 1993. From 1984 to 1990, he worked for Nippon SteelCorporation. From 1990 to 1993, he was a Research Associate at the Kyoto Institute of Economic Research, Kyoto University. From 1993 to 1996, he was an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Business Administration and Informatics at Setsunan University. From 1997 to 2001, he was an Associate Professor at Hiroshima University, and was working with the Department of Artificial Complex Systems Engineering in the Graduate School of Engineering. At present, he is a Professor in that department. His research and teaching activities are in the area of systems engineering, especially game theory, multiobjective decision making, and fuzzy mathematical programming. He is an author or coauthor of about eighty papers, one book in English (Springer: "Fuzzy and Multiobjective Games for Conflict Resolution"), and two books in Japanese.

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 2. Fundamentals of two-person noncooperative games and person cooperative games.- 3. Multiobjective fuzzy two-person zero-sum games.- 4. Multiobjective fuzzy two-person non-zero-sum games.- 5. Fuzzy n-person cooperative games.- 6. Multiobjective n-erson cooperative games.- References.