In this paper we consider stochastic purchase timing models used in marketing for low-involvement products and show that important characteristics of those models are easy to compute. As such these calculations are based on an elementary probabilistic argument and cover not only the well-known...

In this paper we propose a Branch and Price algorithm for solving multi-period single-sourcing problems. In particular, we generalize a Branch and Price algorithm that was developed for the Generalized Assignment Problem (GAP) to a class of convex assignment problems. We then identify an...

The purpose of the present paper is to investigate whether Spain's accession to the European Union in 1986 caused a structural break in the allocation of total supplies of manufactures over domestic and foreign supplies. To that end we use the homogeneity-constrained Almost Ideal Demand System...

Crude oil price volatility has been analyzed extensively for organized spot, forward and futures markets for well over a decade, and is crucial for forecasting volatility and Value-at-Risk (VaR). There are four major benchmarks in the international oil market, namely West Texas Intermediate...

In this paper we compare market prices of credit default swaps with model prices. We show that a simple reduced form model with a constant recovery rate outperforms the market practice of directly comparing bonds' credit spreads to default swap premiums. We find that the model works well for...

The so-called Balassa-Samuelson model implies that relative prices of non-traded goods may be nonstationary and, hence, that PPP should preferably be tested on real exchange rates based on prices of traded goods only. We propose a simple test for PPP among traded goods which can be applied to...

Most multivariate variance models suffer from a common problem, the “curse of dimensionalityâ€. For this reason, most are fitted under strong parametric restrictions that reduce the interpretation and flexibility of the models. Recently, the literature has focused on multivariate models...

In this paper a symmetric primal-dual transformation for positive semidefinite programming is proposed. For standard SDP problems, after this symmetric transformation the primal variables and the dual slacks become identical. In the context of linear programming, existence of such a primal-dual...

In this paper we consider empirical econometric models for nine brands of fast-moving nondurable consumer product using weekly observed scanning data on market share and distribution conditional on advertising, price, and promotion activities. Since the data show nonstationary characteristics,...

We study a class of scheduling problems involving the maximum lateness criterion and an element of batching. For all the problems that we examine, algorithms appear in the literature which consist of a sorting step to determine an optimal job sequence, followed by a dynamic programming step...