Ebook: Probability and Information

The present book, designed for a wide circle of readers (familiarity with mathematics up to high school level suffices for comprehension of all of its contents), makes, of course, no claim to serve even as an elementary introduction to the scientific information theory. We can give here only a preliminary idea of important practical applications of this theory. Similarly, it shall not be possible to deal here with the deeper purely mathematical problems connected with the information theory. The main aim of the authors is much simpler : it consists of acquainting the reader with certain, though not complex but highly important, new mathematical ideas, and leading him through these ideas to an understanding of one of the possible means of employing mathematical methods of modern engineering.

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The 1980s and 1990s have been a period of exciting new developments in the modelling of decision-making under risk and uncertainty. Extensions of the theory of expected utility and alternative theories of `non-expected utility' have been devised to explain many puzzles and paradoxes of individual and collective choice behaviour. This volume presents some of the best recent work on the modelling of risk and uncertainty, with applications to problems in environmental policy, public health, economics and finance. Eighteen papers by distinguished economists, management scientists, and statisticians shed new light on phenomena such as the Allais and St. Petersburg paradoxes, the equity premium puzzle, the demand for insurance, the valuation of public health and safety, and environmental goods.
Audience: This work will be of interest to economists, management scientists, risk and policy analysts, and others who study risky decision-making in economic and environmental contexts.