Nonparametric estimation of concave production technologies by entropic methods

An econometric methodology is developed for nonparametric estimation of concave production technologies. The methodology, bases on the priciple of maximum likelihood, uses entropic distance and concvex programming techniques to estimate production functions.convex programming, production functions, entropy

Pricing and Dimensioning Competing Large-Scale Service Providers

The literature on many-server approximations provides significant simplifications toward the optimal capacity sizing of large-scale monopolists, but falls short of providing similar simplifications for a competitive setting in which each firm's decision is affected by its competitors' actions. In this paper, we introduce a framework that combines many-server heavy-traffic analysis with the notion of epsilon-Nash equilibrium and apply it to the study of equilibria in a market with multiple large-scale service providers that compete on both prices and response times. In an analogy to fluid and diffusion approximations for queueing systems, we introduce the notions of fluid game and diffusion game. The proposed framework allows us to provide first-order and second-order characterization results for the equilibria in these markets. We use our results to provide insights into the price and service-level choices in the market and, in particular, into the impact of market scale on the interdependence between these two strategic decisions. </jats:p

Buying from the Babbling Retailer? The Impact of Availability Information on Customer Behavior

Provision of real-time information by a firm to its customers has become prevalent in recent years in both the service and retail sectors. In this paper, we study a retail operations model where customers are strategic in both their actions and in the way they interpret information, whereas the retailer is strategic in the way it provides information. This paper focuses on the ability (or the lack thereof) to communicate unverifiable information and influence customers' actions. We develop a game-theoretic framework to study this type of communication and discuss the equilibrium language emerging between the retailer and its customers. We show that for a single retailer and homogeneous customer population setting, the equilibrium language that emerges carries no information. In this sense, a single retailer providing information on its own cannot create any credibility with the customers. We study how the results are impacted due to the heterogeneity of the customers. We provide conditions under which the firm may be able to influence the customer behavior. In particular, we show that the customers' willingness to pay and willingness to wait cannot be ranked in an opposite manner. However, even when the firm can influence each customer class separately, the effective demand is not impacted. This paper was accepted by Yossi Aviv, operations management. </jats:p

The Impact of Delaying the Delay Announcements

Many service providers use delay announcements to inform customers of anticipated delays. However, this information is usually not provided immediately but after a short period of time (spent either waiting or occupied by the system). The focus of this paper is on the impact of this postponement on the ability of the firm to influence customer behavior by communicating nonverifiable congestion information to its customers, as well as on the profits and utilities for the firm and the customers, respectively. We show that this postponement can actually help the firm create credibility and augment the resulting equilibrium. However, in other settings this delay can also detract from the resulting equilibrium. Furthermore, we show that whenever credibility is created it improves not only the profit for the firm but also the customers' overall utility under certain settings. </jats:p