May 20, 2015 | News | Call for Papers

The science of choice - How to model the decision-making process?

On October 28-30, a workshop on the individual decision-making process will take place at the MPIDR. Paper proposals can be submitted until July 15.

Every day we face new decisions we have to take. And some of them are more important than others. A major decision, for example, is to decide whether we want to have children or not or whether we want to leave our country or not. Scientists are studying these decision-making processes, for example, to find the factors that influence decisions. By means of using models, they hope to make long-term forecasts for decisions relevant to society, such as forecasts of migration flows.

The MPIDR and the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) Panel on Microsimulation and Agent-based Modeling in Demography organize a workshop on modeling the individual decision-making process. The focus is on decisions that shape the life course, such as the lifestyle choice to have a child or not and to emigrate or not. The workshop will take place at the MPIDR October 28-30, 2015. The Call for Paper deadline is July 15.

The aim of the three-day workshop is to discuss perspectives on how individuals make decisions and to discuss alternative probability models of decision-making processes. The workshop focuses on microsimulation models and agent-based models of life choices, including those related to decision-making under uncertainty. In addition, discussions will be held on which decision theories and algorithms can be verified and what empirically relevant predictors may serve to improve the validity of models.