From Agreements to Consensus

A Decentralized Approach to Solve Group AHP with Agreements by Consensus

The analytical hierarchical process (AHP) is a multi-criteria, decisionmaking process that has demonstrated to be of a high utility to achieve complex decisions. This work presents a method to apply it in grupal decisions, where the weights that each user assigns to the criteria are different and private. A combination of consensus process and gradient ascent is used to reach a common agreement...

Trade Agreements and Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Pharmaceuticals

There is growing international concern about the risks posed by direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription pharmaceuticals, including via the internet. Recent trade agreements negotiated by the United States, however, incorporate provisions that may constrain national regulation of DTCA. Some provisions explicitly mention DTCA; others enable foreign investors to seek compensation if ...

From Washington Consensus to BeST Consensus for World Development

Reputation-based Agreements: From Individual to Collective Opinions

Reputation mechanisms have been developed during last few years as valid methods to allow agents to better select partners in organisational environments. In most of works presented in the literature, reputation is summarised as a value, typically a number, that represents an opinion sent by an agent to another about a certain third party. In this work, we put forward a novel concept of reputat...

From Early Requirements to Business Processes with Service Level Agreements

When designing a service-based business process employing loosely-coupled services, one is not only interested in guaranteeing a certain flow of work, but also in how the work will be performed. This involves the consideration of non-functional properties which go from execution time, costs, up to security and trust. Ideally, a designer would like to have guarantees over the behavior of the ser...