Editorial

Editorial
by Gurumurthy Kalyanaram

Covid-19 Decisions, and Decision-Making Models
by Gurumurthy Kalyanaram

Covid-19 has imposed upon governments very consequential decisions about closing the economy/society and opening the society/economy. Such decision-making can adopt one of two models: compensatory model or a non-compensatory model.

Decision Making Models and Algorithms

Compensatory decision making involves identifying a set of criteria relevant to the decision, assigning a relative importance weight to each criterion (the sum of all the relative importance weights must add to one), assessing the performance of each criteria, computing an overall composite score for each option, and selecting the option with the best score. The model is based on utility theory. They are rational decision choices that are represented by multi-attribute utility models (Keeney and Raiffa 1976).

In our context, it is a binary decision: to reopen or not. Here, the compensatory model will provide a composite score. The economy will be reopened if the composite score is above the score advocated by the decision maker prior to the calculation.

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