Hierarchical and bilevel programming

Approximately twenty years ago the modern interest for hierarchical programming was initiated by J. Bracken and J.M. McGill [9], [10]. The activities in the field have ever grown lively, both in terms of theoretical developments and terms of the diversity of the applications. The collection of seven papers in this issue covers a diverse number of topics and provides a good picture of recent research activities in the field of bilevel and hierarchical programming. The papers can be roughly divided into three categories; Linear bilevel programming is addressed in the first two papers by Gendreau et al and Moshirvaziri et al; The following three papers by Nicholls, Loridan & Morgan, and Kalashnikov & Kalashnikova are concerned with nonlinear bilevel programming; and, finally, Wen & Lin and Nagase & Aiyoshi address hierarchical decision making issues relating to both biobjective and bilevel programming.