This paper determines the optimal timing of dike heightenings as well as the corresponding optimal dike heightenings to protect against floods. To derive the optimal policy we design an algorithm based on the Impulse Control Maximum Principle. In this way the paper presents one of the first real...

We study the optimal design of a queueing system when agents' arrival and servicing are governed by a general Markov process. The designer of the system chooses entry and exit rules for agents, their service priority---or queueing discipline---as well as their information, while ensuring that...

We study the problem of how to allocate a set of indivisible objects like jobs or houses and an amount of money among a group of people as fairly and as efficiently as possible. A particular constraint for such an allocation is that every person should be assigned with the same number of objects...

It is evident that linear programming model remains the most potent mathematical tool for the efficient allocation of scarce operational resources of an organization. Whilst projecting the graphical method as the easiest solution approach to linear programming where only two constraining factors...

Expected consumer's surplus rarely represents preferences over price lotteries. Still, I give sufficient conditions for policies which maximize aggregate expected surplus to be interim Pareto Optimal. Besides two standard partial equilibrium conditions, I assume that feasible prices satisfy a...

We allocate objects to agents as exemplified primarily by school choice. Welfare judgments of the object-allocating agency are encoded as edge weights in the acceptability graph. The welfare of an allocation is the sum of its edge weights. We introduce the constrained welfare-maximizing...

In ordinal (probabilistic) assignment problems, each agent reports his preference rankings over objects and receives a lottery defined over those objects. A common efficiency notion, sd-efficiency, is obtained by extending the preference rankings to preferences over lotteries by means of...

Markets for natural resources and commodities are often oligopolistic. In these markets, production capacities are key for strategic interaction between the oligopolists. We analyze how different market structures influence oligopolistic capacity investments and thereby affect supply, prices and...

To mitigate the high variability of wind and make it a more viable renewable energy source, observers recommend greater integration of spatially-separated electrical grids, with high transmission lines linking load centers, scattered wind farms and hydro storage sites. In this study, we examine...

Exporting countries are concerned that sanitary standards might shield domestic industry from foreign competition. This study analyzes economic effects of changes in Western Hemisphere sanitary requirements on broiler trade in the Americas. A mathematical programming model detects that if Brazil...