Simona Hasková

Fuzzy Approach as a Strong Tool for Solving Economic Issues Simona Hasková

Economic and managerial decision-making is a process whose result is, in addition to the considered objective factors, also influenced by subjective factors in the sense of experience of a knowledgeable expert. This cannot be taken into account in conventional approaches. The result is the oftenobserved discrepancy between the opinion of the economists/managers and the output of the decision-making model. Reducing this discrepancy is the aim of various alternatives to conventional approaches in which the human factor can be taken into account. One of them is the so-called "fuzzy approach". This approach is presented at the theoretical and application level in four chapters demonstrating examples of a fuzzy procedure in solving problems of an economic nature. The first two chapters are devoted to fuzzy predictions of macroeconomic variables - the development of gross domestic product and youth unemployment. The third and fourth chapters reflect strategic decisionmaking problems - they include a fuzzy estimate of creditworthiness and credit risk of corporate bond issuers and fuzzy interval analysis of investment efficiency in electric vehicle production based on internal rate of return. Each chapter first offers a brief insight into the problem followed by an introductory and theoretical part related to the problem. Then the application of a fuzzy approach to solving a specific problem follows. The results are discussed and summarized in the final section. In all chapters, the theoretical and application interpretation is constructed in the form of "step by step" process that allows the reader quick insight and understanding of the problems solved.