Most models for purchase timing behavior of households do not take into account that many households have regular and non-shopping days. I propose a statistical model for purchase timing that exploits information on the shopping days of households. It delivers forecasts for the number of...

We develop a formal statistical approach to investigate the possibility that leading indicator variables have different lead times at business cycle peaks and troughs. For this purpose, we propose a novel Markov switching vector autoregressive model, where economic growth and leading indicators...

Immigration tends to have a mitigating effect on the socioeconomic gender gap among immigrants. To explain this finding, we propose a gender convergence hypothesis that states that migration to a modern ‘open’ society offers women the opportunity to improve their position relative...

The floating stock distribution concept exploits inter-modal transport to deploy inventories in a supply chain in advance of retailer demand. It is appropriate in case of batch production and containerized transport of standard product mixes. In this way response times are reduced and storage...

Steel structures such as bridges, tanks and pylons are exposed to outdoor weathering conditions. In order to prevent them from corrosion they are protected by an organic coating system. Unfortunately, the coating system itself is also subject to deterioration. Imperfect maintenance actions such...

Microsimulation models are increasingly used in the evaluation of cancer screening. Latent parameters of such models can be estimated by optimization of the goodness-of-fit. We compared the efficiency and accuracy of the Response Surface Methodology and the Nelder and Mead Simplex Method for...

In this paper we introduce robust versions of the classical static and dynamic single leg seat allocation models as analyzed by Wollmer, and Lautenbacher and Stidham, respectively. These robust models take into account the inaccurate estimates of the underlying probability distributions. As...

In this report we discuss a model that can be used to determine stocking levels using the data that comes forward from a Shell RCM analysis and the data available in E-SPIR. The model is appropriate to determine stock quantities for parts that are used in redundancy situations, and for parts...

A widely known algorithm for ¯nding the shortest path in a network is Bidirectional A*. The version of bidirectional A* that is considered the most appropriate hitherto, uses so-called balanced heuristic estimates. In this paper, we focus on symmetric heuristic estimates. First, we show that...

An issue hardly ever mentioned in the analysis of labour market transitions is that for some individuals labour market transitions occur at a very low rate. Therefore, these individuals might stay on disability benefits or in domestic care till they reach the retirement age of 65. This implies...