Essays in Revenue Management and Dynamic Pricing

In this dissertation, I study two topics in the context of revenue management. The ¯rst topicinvolves building a mathematical model to analyze the competition between many retailerswho can change the price of their respective products in real time. I develop a game-theoreticmodel for the dynamic price competition where each retailer's objective is to maximize itsown expected total revenue. I use the Nash equilibrium to predict market equilibrium andprovide managerial insights into how each retailer should take into account its competitors'behavior when setting the price. The second topic involves working with Amtrak, the national railroad passenger corpo-ration, to develop a revenue management model. The revenue management department ofAmtrak provides the sales data of Auto Train, a service of Amtrak that allows passengers tobring their vehicles on the train. I analyze the demand structure from sales data and build amathematical model to describe the sales process for Auto Train. I further develop an algorithm to calculate the optimal pricing strategy that yields the maximum revenue. Because ofthe distinctive service provided by Auto Train, my findings make important contribution tothe revenue management literature.