This book is mainly focused on the development of tools for decision-makers in finance, ranging from treasurers of firms to professional investors and bank managers. It presents a broad variety of applications using techniques and methodologies from various fields such as econometrics, operations research and financial mathematics. The tools for decision-making have been modified towards financial decision support systems. The role of the decision-maker has become dominant, both in the development and in the use of the decision support systems. The developments in both the computer hardware and software for computers simplify the design of individualized decision support systems. Financial modelling functions as a liason between theoretical financial expertise and practice.

Both the 'First International Summer School on Multiple Criteria Decision Making Methods, Applications and Software' and the present volume of readings could only be realised with assistance and support from many sides. We would like to express our gratitude to all those who have contributed to making a success of the first of a hopefully long series of summer schools in this field and to all those who have contribut. ed to the present volume. First of all we are grateful for the financial means supplied by a long list of sponsors, the most important of which are mentioned on the copyright page. Next, we are grateful to the members of the organising committee, Anna Ostanello and Giovanni Zambruno. Since this is the first of what will become a series of summer schools, the chairman of the organising committee, Benedetto Matarazzo, will start this volume with a brief account of the school held in Acireale. The programme committee consisted of Jean Fichefet, Anna Ostanello, Bernard Roy, Jaap Spronk (chairman) and Stanley Zionts. Their valuable contribu tion is gratefully acknowledged, as is the contribution of all the lecturers at the school. Of course, a school is not only made by its teachers, but just as much by its students. The primary aim of a school is to teach and to stimulate the students."

The pioneering study by Bowman [1980) reawakened interest in risk and return relations in the strategic management literature. We do not examine this literature here because we have elsewhere reviewed it in detail 1 and because, for the most part, these studies have been confined to ex post data. Discussions of the strategies which subjects used to direct their ex ante evaluations of risks and returns have either been omitted or else have been only indirectly inferred from ex post data. In addition, with few exceptions, this literature does not attempt to ascertain the meanings that might have been assigned by subjects to terms like "risk" and/or the "returns" with which they have been concerned. Even fewer of these studies have attempted to ascertain how the subjects implemented their definitions en of prospective strategies. Thus, tius literature may route to arriving at evaluations best be regarded as bearing only indirect relations to the present study which is concerned not only with the meanings assigned to terms like "risk" and "return" but also with how these terms are used in arriving at risk and return evaluations of proposed strategies as well as how they are measured and used, on an ex ante basis en route to seeing how these evaluations match with ex post performance. In a sense, one part of this study--i. e.