We systematically study the hardness and the approximability of combinatorial multi-objective NP optimization problems (multi-objective problems, for short).

We define solution notions that precisely capture the typical algorithmic tasks in multi-objective optimization. These notions inherit polynomial-time Turing reducibility from multivalued functions, which allows us to compare the solution notions and ... more >>>

The purpose of this paper is to provide efficient algorithms that decide membership for classes of several Boolean hierarchies for which efficiency (or even decidability) were previously not known. We develop new forbidden-chain characterizations for the single levels of these hierarchies and obtain the following results:

1. The classes of ... more >>>