The value of seasonal energy storage depends on how the firm operates storage to capture seasonal price spreads. Energy storage operations typically face limited operational flexibility characterized by the speed of storing and releasing energy, which makes the optimal policy, in general,...

This paper examines the inventories of publicly traded American manufacturing companies between 1981 and 2000. The median of inventory holding periods were reduced from 96 days to 81 days. The average rate of inventory reduction is about 2% per year. The greatest reduction was found for...

This paper examines the inventories of publicly traded U.S. retail and wholesale companies between 1981 and 2004. First, we document that inventory holdings have been reduced. The median of wholesale inventory holding periods was reduced from 73 days to 49 days. Retail inventory did not start to...

The relationship between commodity inventory and short-term price variations has received considerable attention, but the understanding has been limited to single-stage cross-sectional relation. In this paper, we aim to deepen our understanding of the inventory-price relationship in two...

This paper analyzes a unit-contingent power purchase agreement between an electricity distributor and a power plant. Under such a contract the distributor pays the plant a fixed price if the plant is operational and nothing if plant outage occurs. Pricing a unit-contingent contract is...

Based on cluster analysis, a novel method is introduced in this paper to generate multistage scenarios. A linear programming model is proposed to exclude the arbitrage opportunity by appending a scenario to the generated scenario set. By means of a cited stochastic linear goal programming...

We study financial market incompleteness induced by discontinuities in asset returns. When there are multiple outcomes for a discontinuity, it is shown that this incompleteness cannot be removed by the introduction of extra securities. Claims cannot be hedged and are thereby not uniquely priced...

We study a tandem queueing system with K servers and no waiting space in between. A customer needs service from one server but can leave the system only if all down-stream servers are unoccupied. Such a system is often observed in toll collection during rush hours in transportation networks, and...

We consider a single-period distribution system with one supplier and two retailers. The supplier may have infinite or finite capacity. The demand at each retailer is random. When a stockout occurs at one retailer the customer may go to the other retailer. We study both the decentralized and...