Consistency of the decision-maker in pair-wise comparisons

Most authors assume that the natural behaviour of the decision-maker is being inconsistent. This paper investigates the main sources of inconsistency and analyses methods for reducing or eliminating inconsistency. Decision support systems can contain interactive modules for that purpose. In a system with consistency control, there are three stages. First, consistency should be checked: a consistency measure is needed. Secondly, approval or rejection has to be decided: a threshold value of inconsistency measure is needed. Finally, if inconsistency is ‘high’, corrections have to be made: an inconsistency reducing method is needed. This paper reviews the difficulties in all stages. An entirely different approach is to elaborate a decision support system in order to force the decision-maker to give consistent values in each step of answering pair-wise comparison questions. An interactive questioning procedure resulting in consistent (sub) matrices has been demonstrated.

The 3 per cent Barcelona Target: A Critical Appraisal of the Failure of the Lisbon Strategy’s Knowledgebased Economy and Society Project

Ten years after the unanimous approval of the Lisbon Strategy at a special meeting of the European Council on 23-24 March 2000 in Lisbon, it will be inevitable for the European Council, the European Commission and the majority of the EU member states to face with its fi asco and to account for the reasons of their fundamental policy, governance and economic failures in 2010. The recent turbulence of the global economy offers some excuses for the underperformance of the main objectives of the Lisbon Strategy in the essential social and economic domains, like job creation, economic growth, and environmental sustainability. Negative growth rates, macroeconomic and fi nancial instability, the contraction of the internal and external markets of the European economy, drop in demand for capital investment, goods and services, sinking corporate revenues, depreciation of corporate assets, increasing private and public indebtedness, falling rate of employment, weakening social cohesion, widening social inequality, and so forth not only deprive the majority of the EU member states of fulfi lling the main objectives of the Lisbon Strategy but also drive them into worse social and economic conditions in many policy domains than they were in 2000.

The corruption risks of EU funds in Hungary

In corruption, a group of players gain an economic advantage without providing any socially beneficial services in return, therefore corruption is considered to be a form of rent-seeking. Similar to other forms of rent-seeking, corruption causes losses on a societal level, due to the less efficient allocation of resources, as well as the costs of operation and prosecution. Fighting corruption is important not just because of ethical but also economic considerations. Contributions from the European Union are making possible the use of more funds than ever, and spending the full amount of this money is a priority preference of the government. The abundance of funds and the pressure on absorption increase corruption, by the managers of the funds overplanning the amount of money to be allocated to individual tender invitations, setting generous rules on eligible costs, and specifying low rates of own contribution wherever possible. As a result, the opportunities for rent-seeking are increased, as it is worth it for beneficiaries to carry out the project even after relinquishing part of the funds they have been awarded. Thus, the abundance of funds generates a sphere of corruption in which rent-seekers may appear on various levels of the system, often even without the knowledge or approval of those on higher decisionmaking levels.