The purpose of this paper is to point out some progresses which were made in the field of Multicriteria Decision-Aid. These progresses concern individual preference modelling, preference aggregation, mathematical programming and theoretical aspects of MCDA. © 1994 Springer-Verlag.

The need to increase the level of resources channelled to fundamental research and higher education is broadly acknowledged. These two activities have all of the characteristics of collective or public goods: they thus need to be primarily funded with public money. Traditional economic theory...