We develop a dynamic model of hospital competition where (i) waiting times increase if demand exceeds supply; (ii) patients choose a hospital based in part on waiting times; and (iii) hospitals incur waiting time penalties. We show that, whereas policies based on penalties will lead to lower...

We consider optimal pricing for a two-station tandem queueing system with finite buffers and price-sensitive customers. The service provider quotes prices to customers using either static or dynamic pricing. The objective is to maximize either the infinite-horizon discounted profit or the...

In manufacturing and service operations, flexibility is beneficial for matching supply with demand, but it comes at a cost. In modern digital workplaces, users/agents possess a spectrum of different skills associated with corresponding and variable task preferences: Some are inclined to give up...

We use queuing-related behavior as an instrument for assessing the social appeal of alternative cultural norms. Specifically, we study the behavior of rational and sophisticated individuals who stand in a given queue waiting to be served, and who, in order to speed up the process, consider...

RESTART is a widely applicable accelerated simulation technique that allows the evaluation of extremely low probabilities. In this method a number of retrials (or paths) are made when the process reaches certain thresholds of a function of the system state, called the importance function. In...

In his thought-provoking book What Money Can't Buy. The Moral Limits of Markets, Sandel (2012) claims that some nonmarket ways of allocating goods, such as the ethics of the queue (first come, first served), are gradually being displaced by the ethics of the market. He highlights inequality as...

We estimate the effects of wait time for orthopedic surgery on health and labor market outcomes of Norwegian workers. Our identification strategy exploits variation in wait times for surgery generated by the idiosyncratic variation in system congestion at the time of referral. While we find no...