MULTIPLE CRITERIA DECISION MAKING (MCDM) METHODS IN ECONOMICS: AN OVERVIEW

The main research activities in economics during the last five years have significantly increased. The main research fields are operation research and sustainable development. The philosophy of decision making in economics is to assess and select the most preferable solution, implement it and to gain the biggest profit. Preferences are used in a lot of problem situations both in individual and organizational decision making processes. A number of effective decision making methods that support decisions under conditions of multiple criteria have appeared in the last decade. This paper presents a panorama of decision making methods in economics and summarizes the most important results and applications over the last five years. This paper considers decision making in light of the recent developments of multiple criteria decision making methods (because classical methods are overviewed in a lot of earlier publications). Authors of different approaches, pioneering studies and works are presented in short.