TEORIA DELLE DECISIONI PER LE SCELTE PUBBLICHE

1. Knowledge and understanding: 

The educational path of the course aims to acquire the theoretical fundamentals and the main applicative methodologies to support decisions in economic and managerial fields focusing on multiple criteria decision analysis and its applications related to decisions in public issues. In addition to the necessary theoretical notions, the course aims to transfer appropriate professional competencies, both to enhance the concepts dealt with from an operational point of view and to complete the educational path. In such a way, the course will provide students with the necessary knowledge to apply the methods and the studied techniques in the best way in the business world. To reach these objectives, suitable equipment and didactic methodologies, such as multimedia tools, databases, spreadsheets, etc., will be used during the lessons. The whole educational path of the course aims to put together different didactic methodologies to develop both the inductive capacity and the students' logic-deductive process. The understanding check is not focused only on the last part of the course, that is, during the final exam; during the whole educational path a deep and continuous check of the student's understanding and effective learning of the explained concepts will be done. 

2. Applying knowledge and understanding:

Great attention is addressed to the operative activity of the future graduates, who have to cope with the problems mentioned above, often in different cross-the-board and interdisciplinary contexts. To this aim, a didactic methodology addressed to the understanding of the conceptual and analytical tools presented during the lessons will be used. It will aspire to the development of a critical ability of the student versus the treated concepts also presenting during the lessons real-world cases that have been dealt with by using the explained methodologies.

3. Making judgement:

The development of an independent critical ability in the context of the treated arguments is one of the main educational objectives of the course. A good acquisition of the theoretical knowledge and of the operative abilities planned in the syllabus of the course is not sufficient for a complete education of the student if this preparation is not associated with the acquisition of a deep ability to evaluate, set up, and solve a problem suggesting adequate methods and techniques. This awareness is a guide for the professors during the whole educational path, making them interact with the students in a constructive logic, to stimulate their ability to reflect, acquire, and interpret the necessary information and the essential data to set up, analyze, and solve the coped problem. Therefore, during the course, students will be taught how to search for appropriate informative sources (scientific publications, databases, websites, etc.) and look at their reliability. During the lessons, some real-world case studies will be presented by experts in the multiple criteria decision analysis field. 

4. Communication skills:

Students will be prepared to explain to stakeholders (not necessarily specialists in the field) projects and operative proposals regarding the problems coped during their work activity using adequate technical language and motivating the use of the suggested methodologies. Indeed, it is not enough to be able to apply correct methods and techniques that represent in a good way the considered problem; it is necessary to be able to justify the development and the validity of the performed analysis. To this aim, in addition to an adequate theoretical knowledge of the presented methods and of their operative implementation, it is necessary to learn how to use computational tools and multimedia technologies. The whole educational path will pay attention to developing such abilities ensuring the active participation of each student by means of appropriate didactic activities. Students are encouraged to express their thoughts by means of adequate reasoning and techniques, to write documents, to make presentations, to discuss what has been taught during the lessons to stimulate a productive interaction also from the communicative point of view. 

5. Learning skills:

From the beginning of the lessons, students will be provided with suggestions and incitements to participate in the whole educational path in an active way, to improve their individual way of studying, and to learn in a more efficient way the concepts presented during the course. As already said above, the check of the effective acquisition of theoretical and operative knowledge is performed during the whole educational path and not only during the final exam. During the lessons, it will be verified if the knowledge has been efficiently transmitted reviewing, eventually, the way concepts are presented in class.  

The teaching is conducted through lectures in which, in addition to the theoretical aspects, ample space is given to the resulting applications, so that the student can acquire a full understanding and conscious mastery of the subject.

First  PART

Objectives:  To introduce the concept of choice in the public sector; To convey the basic ideas and the main methodologies of decision analysis by acquiring the ability to apply them in real decisions.

Programme description: Basic concepts of choices in the public sector; Structure of a multi-criteria problem: alternatives, criteria, directions of preference, problems (choice, ranking, sorting); Discrete and continuous problems; Dominance; Multiple Attribute Value Theory; Additive utility; Weighted sum; Analytic Hierarchy Process; TOPSIS; Choquet integral; ELECTRE methods (ELECTRE IS, ELECTRE II, ELECTRE III, ELECTRE Tri); PROMETHEE methods (PROMETHEE I and II); Decision rule-based methods.

Second  PART

Title: Multi-criteria decision analysis: indirect technique and case studies

Objectives: To convey the basic ideas and the main methodologies of decision analysis by acquiring the ability to apply them in real decisions.

Program description: Structure of a multiple criteria decision analysis problem: alternatives, criteria, preference direction, problematiques (choice, ranking, sorting); discrete and continuous problems; dominance; Multiple Attribute Value Theory; additive utility; weighted sum; Analytic Hierarchy Process; Choquet integral; ELECTRE methods (ELECTRE IS, ELECTRE II, ELECTRE III, ELECTRE Tri); PROMETHEE methods (PROMETHEE I e II); methods based on decision rules. Difference between cost-benefit analysis and multiple criteria decision analysis.

3^rd  PART

Title: Multiple criteira decision analysis: indirect technique and case studies

Programme description: Distinction between direct and indirect technique of parameter inference; tradeoffs and importance of criteria; SMART; SWING; SRF; UTA; Robust Ordinal Regression; Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis; Introduction to MATLAB; presentation of real-life cases of choices in the public domain addressed through the concepts presented during the course.

-  Handouts provided by the lecturer and slides presented in class

- Figueira, Greco, Ehrgott (2005). Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis: State of the Art Surveys. Springer, Berlin

NB: The recommended text is in the departmental library.

The examination consists of two parts:

1. implementation of a project in which the student is asked to tackle a multi-criteria analysis problem using one or more of the methods presented during the course of the lectures
2. an oral examination in which the student is assessed on the basis of adequate knowledge and mastery of all the topics in the syllabus.

The grade will be awarded on the basis of the level of preparation demonstrated by the student, it being understood that passing the exam requires the attainment of a minimum threshold of knowledge of the topics covered in the syllabus.

The learning assessment may also be conducted electronically, should the conditions require it.

1. What is meant by public choice? Can you give me examples of public choice problems?
   
2. What is a binary relation? 
3. What is a preference structure?
   
4. What are the main preference structures?
   
5. Can you describe the structure of a multicriteria analysis problem?
   
6. What is meant by the direction of preference of criteria?
   
7. What are the "problematics" addressed in multicriteria analysis?
   
8. What is the dominance relation?
   
9. What is Multiple Attribute Value Theory based on and what is a utility function?
   
10. Can you explain the preference model based on the weighted sum?
    
11. What is the Analytic Hierarchy Process?
    
12. How is TOPSIS applied and what is it based on?
    
13. What is the Choquet integral and how does it differ from a weighted sum?
    
14. What is the basis for the ELECTRE and PROMETHEE methods?
    
15. How do the direct and indirect parameter inference techniques differ?
    
16. What is the difference between tradeoffs and importance of criteria?
    
17. What are SMART and SWING methods used for and how are they applied?
    
18. What is the SRF method?
    
19. Can you describe the UTA method?
    
20. What is Robust Ordinal Regression based on?
    
21. What is the output of the Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis?