During the last several years, there has been substantial and important growth in the application of quantitative analysis, i.e., operations research/management science, statistics, and related arenas, to interdisciplinary problems arising in the area of socio-economic planning and development. Socio-Economic Planning Sciences is an international journal devoted exclusively to research in this important, but under-represented area. It provides a medium for research that might not appear in more specialized journals, either because of the interdisciplinary or applied character of the study, or the mathematical/quantitative nature of the research. The journal thus serves as a focus for investigations that have hitherto appeared in widely-scattered sources and/or less-than-appropriate sources. Socio-Economic Planning Sciences strongly encourages contributions dealing with applications of quantitative models and techniques to important decision problems in the service and public sectors. Of particular interest are accounts of such studies carried out in developing countries and economically emerging regions of the world. Review articles in important methodological and substantive areas are also of interest. The principal criterion used in evaluating a manuscript submitted to the journal is: uniqueness or innovation of the work in terms of the methodology being developed, and/or its application to a problem of particular importance in the public or service sector and/or the setting within which the effort is being made, e.g. an emerging region of the world. That is to say, of the model/methodology itself, the application, and the problem context, at least one of these must be unique and important.