Scholars@Duke
Robert T. Clemen

Robert T. Clemen

Professor Emeritus
Fuqua School of Business
robert.clemen@duke.edu
Box 90120, Durham, NC 27708-0120
A05E Fuqua Sch of Bus, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications

Partition Dependence and Carryover Biases in Subjective Probability Assessment Surveys for Continuous Variables: Model-Based Estimation and Correction

Journal Article Decision Analysis · March 1, 2016 As probability elicitation becomes widely used, methods other than one-on-one interviews are being used to elicit expert probabilities. This paper considers biases that may arise when probabilities are elicited in an online or workbook setting. We develop ... Full text Cite

Empiric antibiotic treatment of erythema migrans-like skin lesions as a function of geography: a clinical and cost effectiveness modeling study.

Journal Article Vector Borne Zoonotic Dis · December 2013 The skin lesion of early Lyme disease, erythema migrans (EM), is so characteristic that routine practice is to treat all such patients with antibiotics. Because other skin lesions may resemble EM, it is not known whether presumptive treatment of EM is appr ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Outsourcing sustainability: A game-theoretic modeling approach

Journal Article Environment Systems and Decisions · June 1, 2013 As a response to stakeholders' interest in sustainable products and services, an organization may change its approach to sustainability issues, from isolated social and environmental projects to corporate sustainability strategies and practices that are pa ... Full text Cite

Toward an Improved Methodology to Construct and Reconcile Decision Analytic Preference Judgments

Journal Article Decision Analysis · June 2013 Psychologists and behavioral economists have documented a variety of judgmental flaws that people make when they face novel decision situations. Similar flaws arise when decision analysts work with decision makers to assess their preferences and t ... Full text Cite

Do Prediction Markets Produce Well-Calibrated Probability Forecasts?

Journal Article Economic Journal · May 1, 2013 This article presents new theoretical and empirical evidence on the forecasting ability of prediction markets. We develop a model that predicts that the time until expiration of a prediction market should negatively affect the accuracy of prices as a forec ... Full text Cite

Outsourcing sustainability: a game-theoretic modeling approach

Journal Article Environment Systems and Decisions · 2013 Cite

On the Choice of Baselines in Multiattribute Portfolio Analysis: A Cautionary Note

Journal Article Decision Analysis · December 2009 In multiattribute portfolio optimization, a decision maker must evaluate a number of projects on multiple dimensions and then select the set of projects that optimizes the portfolio's overall value. In this note, we discuss the importance of estab ... Full text Open Access Cite

The clinical utility index as a practical multiattribute approach to drug development decisions.

Journal Article Clinical pharmacology and therapeutics · July 2009 We identify some innovative approaches to predicting overall patient benefit from investigational drugs to support development decisions. We then illustrate calculation of a probabilistic clinical utility index (CUI), an implementation of multiattribute ut ... Full text Cite

Interior additivity and subjective probability assessment of continuous variables

Journal Article Management Science · April 1, 2008 One of the goals of psychological research on subjective probability judgment is to develop prescriptive procedures that can improve such judgments. In this paper, our aim is to reduce partition dependence, a judgmental bias that arises from the particular ... Full text Cite

Comments: Comment on Cooke's classical method

Journal Article Reliability Engineering and System Safety · January 1, 2008 Several of the papers in this special issue are in one way or another linked to Cooke's "classical" method for combining expert probability distributions. This comment focuses on characteristics of that method. In particular, I consider two questions: does ... Full text Cite

Improving and measuring the effectiveness of decision analysis: Linking decision analysis and behavioral decision research

Conference DECISION MODELING AND BEHAVIOR IN COMPLEX AND UNCERTAIN ENVIRONMENTS · January 1, 2008 Link to item Cite

Aggregating probability distributions

Chapter · January 1, 2007 This chapter is concerned with the aggregation of probability distributions in decision and risk analysis. Experts often provide valuable information regarding important uncertainties in decision and risk analyses because of the limited availability of har ... Full text Cite

Subjective probability assessment in decision analysis: Partition dependence and bias toward the ignorance prior

Journal Article Management Science · September 1, 2005 Decision and risk analysts have considerable discretion in designing procedures for eliciting subjective probabilities. One of the most popular approaches is to specify a particular set of exclusive and exhaustive events for which the assessor provides suc ... Full text Cite

Multiple Experts vs. Multiple Methods: Combining Correlation Assessments

Journal Article Decision Analysis · September 2004 Averaging forecasts from several experts has been shown to lead to improved forecasting accuracy and reduced risk of bad forecasts. Similarly, it is accepted knowledge in decision analysis that an expert can benefit from using more than one assess ... Full text Cite

Incentive contracts and strictly proper scoring rules

Journal Article Test · January 1, 2002 When a decision maker (DM) contracts with an expert to provide information, the nature of the contract can create incentives for the expert, and it is up to the DM to ensure that the contract provides incentives that align the expert's and DM's interests. ... Full text Cite

Stakeholder Values and Scientific Modeling in the Neuse River Watershed

Journal Article Group Decision and Negotiation · December 1, 2001 In 1998, the North Carolina Legislature mandated a 30% reduction in the nitrogen loading in the Neuse River in an attempt to reduce undesirable environmental conditions in the lower river and estuary. Although sophisticated scientific models of the Neuse e ... Full text Cite

Analysis of colorectal cancer screening regimens.

Journal Article Health care management science · December 2001 We analyze several colorectal cancer screening methods. We begin with an existing deterministic model of the colorectal cancer growth-and-development model. Using judgments from two knowledgeable experts on colorectal cancer, we incorporate probability dis ... Full text Cite

Naturalistic decision making and decision analysis

Journal Article Journal of Behavioral Decision Making · December 2001 Full text Cite

Simple versus complex methods

Journal Article INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FORECASTING · October 1, 2001 Link to item Cite

The value of decision analysis at Eastman Kodak Company, 1990-1999

Journal Article Interfaces · January 1, 2001 Because of the one-time nature of typical decision-analysis projects, organizations often have difficulty identifying and documenting their value. Based on Eastman Kodak Company's records for 1990 to 1999, we estimated that decision analysis contributed ar ... Full text Cite

Assessing dependence: some experimental results

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 2000 Constructing decision- and risk-analysis probability models often requires measures of dependence among variables. Although data are sometimes available to estimate such measures, in many applications they must be obtained by means of subjective judgment b ... Full text Cite

Sensitivity analysis on a chance node with more than two branches.

Journal Article Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making · October 1999 Sensitivity analysis is an essential part of decision analysis. The literature on medical decision analysis suggests the use of two-branch chance nodes in decision trees to avoid logical inconsistencies during sensitivity analysis. The authors show that th ... Full text Cite

Combining probability distributions from experts in risk analysis

Journal Article Risk Analysis · April 1, 1999 This paper concerns the combination of experts' probability distributions in risk analysis, discussing a variety of combination methods and attempting to highlight the important conceptual and practical issues to be considered in designing a combination pr ... Full text Cite

Correlations and copulas for decision and risk analysis

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 1999 The construction of a probabilistic model is a key step in most decision and risk analyses. Typically this is done by defining a joint distribution in terms of marginal and conditional distributions for the model's random variables. We describe an alternat ... Full text Cite

Copula models for aggregating expert opinions

Journal Article Operations Research · January 1, 1996 This paper discusses the use of multivariate distributions that are functions of their marginals for aggregating information from various sources. The function that links the marginals is called a copula. The information to be aggregated can be point estim ... Full text Cite

Probability forecasting

Journal Article International Journal of Forecasting · 1995 Cite

The use of probability elicitation in the high-level nuclear waste regulation program

Journal Article International Journal of Forecasting · January 1, 1995 Expert judgement elicitation is expected to be used in the performance assessments (PA) of the long-term behavior of high-level waste (HLW) geologic repositories. As a preparation for an effective review of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) PA, the Nucle ... Full text Cite

Future climate at Yucca Mountain, Nevada proposed high-level radioactive waste repository

Journal Article Global Environmental Change · January 1, 1995 Physical and social science techniques were combined to quantitatively predict distance future climate using formal expert elicitation. Natural and human induced environmental changes for the next 10000 years at the site of the proposed high-level radioact ... Full text Cite

Screening probability forecasts: contrasts between choosing and combining

Journal Article International Journal of Forecasting · January 1, 1995 In many forecasting situations, forecasts can be produced by several different methods. The ultimate objective of considering multiple methods may be to select a single method (the choosing scenario) or to aggregate the multiple forecasts into a single for ... Full text Cite

VALUED-FOCUSED THINKING

Journal Article SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW · September 1, 1994 Link to item Cite

Beyond expected utility: rethinking behavioral decision research.

Journal Article Psychological bulletin · July 1994 Much research in psychology has evaluated the quality of people's decisions by comparisons with subjective expected utility (SEU) theory. This article suggests that typical arguments made for the status of utility theory as normative do not justify its use ... Full text Cite

Use of expert judgment elicitation to predict future climate for the Yucca Mountain Nevada vicinity

Journal Article High Level Radioactive Waste Management - Proceedings of the Annual International Conference · 1994 Expert judgment elicitations are expected to supplement other data used to assess the long-term safety of a high-level waste (HLW) geologic repository. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is examining the applicability of expert judgment elicitati ... Cite

Comment on “A Randomization Rule for Selecting Forecasts”

Journal Article Operations Research · August 1993 Full text Cite

Covariance Structure Models and Influence Diagrams

Journal Article Management Science · July 1993 Statisticians use covariance structure modeling as a versatile tool for modeling and testing theory. The models that result provide explicit and detailed descriptions of stochastic systems. We show how covariance structure models are related—mathe ... Full text Cite

Aggregating point estimates. A flexible modeling approach

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 1993 In many decision situations information is available from a number of different sources. Aggregating the diverse bits of information is an important aspect of the decision-making process but entails special statistical modeling problems in characterizing t ... Full text Cite

Sensitivity of Weights in Combining Forecasts

Journal Article Operations Research · June 1992 In the combination of forecasts, weighted averages that attempt to take into account the accuracy of the forecasts and any dependence among forecasts tend to perform poorly in practice. An important factor influencing this performance is the sensi ... Full text Cite

The effect of nonstationarity on combined forecasts

Journal Article International Journal of Forecasting · January 1, 1992 Previous research on the combination of forecasts has, for the most part, implicitly assumed a stationary underlying process so that parameters could be estimated from historical data. While some models weight recent data more heavily in the estimation pro ... Full text Cite

Unanimity and Compromise Among Probability Forecasters

Journal Article Management Science · July 1990 When two forecasters agree regarding the probability of an uncertain event, should a decision maker adopt that probability as his or her own? A decision maker who does so is said to act in accord with the unanimity principle. We examine a variety ... Full text Cite

The expected value of frequency calibration

Journal Article Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · January 1, 1990 It is possible to calibrate subjective probabilites using relative frequency information pertaining to a probability assessor's past performance. This procedure is known as frequency calibration and can be used to improve the quality of assessed probabilit ... Full text Cite

Econometric GNP forecasts: Incremental information relative to naive extrapolation

Journal Article International Journal of Forecasting · January 1, 1989 Recent studies of macroeconomic forecasts have focused primarily on the relative performance of individual forecasts and combinations thereof. We suggest that these forecasts be evaluated in terms of the incremental information that they provide relative t ... Full text Cite

Combining forecasts: A review and annotated bibliography

Journal Article International Journal of Forecasting · January 1, 1989 Considerable literature has accumulated over the years regarding the combination of forecasts. The primary conclusion of this line of research is that forecast accuracy can be substantially improved through the combination of multiple individual forecasts. ... Full text Cite

Collinearity and the use of latent root regression for combining GNP forecasts

Journal Article Journal of Forecasting · January 1, 1989 In combining economic forecasts a problem often faced is that the individual forecasts display some degree of dependence. We discuss latent root regression for combining collinear GNP forecasts. Our results indicate that latent root regression produces mor ... Full text Cite

Statistical analysis of interrelationships between objective and subjective temperature forecasts

Journal Article Monthly Weather Review · January 1, 1988 Two methods of analysis are employed: 1) ordinary least squares regression analysis and 2) a Bayesian information-content analysis. Maximum and minimum temperature forecasts formulated operationally for six National Weather Service offices during the perio ... Full text Cite

Combining Overlapping Information

Journal Article Management Science · March 1987 A decision maker trying to learn about an uncertain quantity may obtain divergent information from a number of sources (e.g., experts). In this paper we study the decision maker's problem of aggregating this information to form his posterior distr ... Full text Cite

Calibration and the Aggregation of Probabilities

Journal Article Management Science · March 1986 In order to avoid the task of assessing a complicated likelihood function, Morris uses an axiomatic approach to develop a multiplicative rule for aggregating a decision maker's and an expert's probabilities. An essential shortcoming of the multipl ... Full text Cite

Linear constraints and the efficiency of combined forecasts

Journal Article Journal of Forecasting · January 1, 1986 Studies of combined forecasts have typically constrained the combining weights to sum to one and have not included a constant term in the combination. In a recent paper, Granger and Ramanathan (1984) have argued in favour of an unrestricted linear combinat ... Full text Cite

LIMITS FOR THE PRECISION AND VALUE OF INFORMATION FROM DEPENDENT SOURCES.

Journal Article Operations Research · January 1, 1985 The model given was based on information sources that provide estimates with a joint distribution of estimation errors. The case in which the joint distribution is multivariate normal received special attention because it is tractable and should often prov ... Full text Cite

Extraneous expert information

Journal Article Journal of Forecasting · January 1, 1985 When a Bayesian decision maker has to choose among information sources, he should consider the anticipated impact that the information will have on his posterior distribution. In some cases he may determine at the outset that an information source will hav ... Full text Cite