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By Fiaz Ahmed
RISK AND UNCERTAINTY IN MANAGERIAL DECISION MAKING
Managerial decisions are made under conditions of certainty, risk, or uncertainty.
Certainty refers to the situation where there is only one possible outcome to a decision
and this outcome is known precisely. For example, investing in Treasury bills leads to
only one outcome (the amount of the yield), and this is known with certainty. The reason
is that there is virtually no chance that the federal government will fail to redeem these
securities at maturity or that it will default on interest payments. On the other hand,
when there is more than one possible out-come to a decision, risk or uncertainty is
present.
Risk refers to a situation where there is more than one possible outcome to a
decision and the probability of each specific outcome is known or can be estimated.
Thus, risk requires that the decision maker knows all the possible outcomes of the
decision and have some idea of the probability of each outcome's occurrence. For
example, in tossing a-coin, we can get either a head or/a rail, and
In the analysis of managerial decision making involving risk, we will use such concepts
as strategy, states of nature, and payoff matrix.
A strategy refers to one of several alternative courses of action that a decision maker
can take to achieve a goal.
States of nature refers to conditions in the future that will have a significant effect on
the degree of success or failure of any strategy, but over which the decision maker has
little or no control. For example, the economy may be in boom normal, or in a recession
in the future. The decision maker has no control over states of nature that will prevail in
the future but the future states of nature certainly affect the outcome of any strategy that
he or she may adopt.
a payoff matrix is a table that shows the possible outcomes or results of strategy
under each state of nature. For example, a payoff matrix may show the level of profit
that would result if the firm builds a large or a small plant and if economy will be
booming, normal, or recessionary in the future.
MEASURING RISK WITH PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTIONS
Risk is the situation where there is more than one possible outcome to a decision and
the
probability of each possible OUTCOIK is known or can be estimated.
Probability Distributions
The concept of probability distributions is essential in evaluating and comparing
investment projects. In general, the outcome or profit of, an investment project is
highest when the economy is booming and smallest when the economy is in a
recession. If we multiply each possible outcome or profit of an investment by its
probability of occurrence and add these products, we get the expected value or profit of
the project. That is,
n
' Expected profit = E (Π) = ∑Πi.P
i =1
where TT, is the profit level associated with outcome i, P, is the probability that outcome /
will occur, and i' = 1 to n refers to the number of possible outcomes or states of nature.
Thus, the expected profit of an investment is the weighted average of all possible profit
levels that can result from the investment under the various states of the economy, with
the probability of those outcomes or profits used as weights. The expected profit of an
investment is a very important consideration in deciding whether or not to undertake the
project or which of two or more projects is preferable.
Notes On Managerial Economics 2
By Fiaz Ahmed
Probability Distribution of States of the Economy
i =1
3. Take the square root of the-variance to find the standard deviation (o-):
n
Standard deviation =δ2 = ∑( Xi −X )
i =1
2
.Pi
If we calculate the standard deviation of the probability distribution of profits for any two
project A and project B. If the standard deviation of the probability distribution of profits
for project A is Rs. 100, while that for project B is Rs. 200. These values provide a
numerical measure of the absolute dispersion of profits from the mean for each project
and confirm the greater dispersion of profits and risk for project B than for project A.