June 1996 € Volume 23 € Number 3
Fishburn Awarded von Neumann
The von Neumann Theory Prize for contributions to the theory of operations
research and management science has been awarded by INFORMS to Peter C.
Fishburn for his contributions to the foundations of choice under certainty,
including axiomizations of utilities, subjective probabilities and ordered
sets, and to related theories of voting and social choice.
Fishburn has published several books, including "The Foundations of
Expected Utility" (1982), and "Nonlinear Preference and Utility
Theory" (1988). Through numerous articles he has made contributions
to: axiomatic foundations of linear preference and utility theory, including
choice under risk and uncertainty, plus axiomatic investigations on subjective
probability; the theory of measurements; multiattribute preference/utility
theory; stochastic dominance and risk analysis; and axiomatic development
of far-reaching, nonlinear preference/utility theories under risk and uncertainty,
including multiattribute and stochastic-dominance studies of the same.
He has also developed basic axiomizations for general probability measures
for partially ordered preferences and for conditional expectations, as well
as finite-dimensional lexicographic utility. Fishburn's early work on multiattribute
utility theory is particularly noteworthy in that his first axiomization
for additive expected utility theory opened up the entire area of multiattribute
expected utility and led to extensive development by others.
Fishburn's earliest work on partially ordered probabilities in decision
analysis have significantly influenced later work in this area. Although
stochastic dominance has old roots in mathematics and statistics, Fishburn's
interest helped to make the topic move widely known in operations research
and economics. And, his theoretical papers greatly extend the notion of
stochastic dominance and revealed close ties between dominance and moments
of probability distributions.
He has played a leading role over the last decade in developing generalized
theories of choice under uncertainty. For example, he has shown that weighted-linear
utility is an intermediate (transitive but nonlinear) stage on the road
from von Neumann-Morgenstern (transitive, linear) to SSB (non-T and non-L)
utility and has established multiattribute decomposition, its properties
in dominance analysis and that states-additive, or expected, SSB preferences
can yield concrete solutions to actual decision problems modeled in customary
ways.
Fishburn has also made significant contributions to group decision making,
including decisions based on voting processes. These contributions are most
evident in his books "The Theory of Social Choice" (1973) and
"Interprofile Conditions and Impossibility" (1987), as well as
the numerous articles on social choice functions, majority choice, representative
majorities, Condorcet's phenomenon of cyclical majorities, and Arrow impossibility
theorems.
In his extensive research and writings, Fishburn has worked with many other
leaders in operations research and management sciences, and has helped many
young scholars and students.
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