In the past decade, we have seen significant increase in the level of outsourcing in many industries. This increase in the level of outsourcing increases the importance of implementing effective contracts in supply chains. In this thesis, we study several issues in supply chain contracts. In the...

A large online retailer strategically stocks inventory for SKUs with low demand. The motivations are to provide a wide range of selections and faster customer fulfillment service. We assume the online retailer has the technological capability to manage and control the inventory globally: all...

By combining the strengths of human and computers, Human Machine Collaborative Decision Making has been shown to generate higher quality solutions in less time than conventional computerized methods. In many cases, it is difficult to model continually changing problems and incorporate human...

This thesis studies two operations management topics in online auctions, and is divided into two parts. Motivated by the increasing use of ShopBots to scan Internet auctions, the first part of the thesis analytically examines whether or not two competing auctioneers selling the same commodity...

We present a methodology for deriving robust airline schedules that are not vulnerable to disruptions caused by bad weather. In this methodology, the existing schedule is partitioned into independent sub-schedules or layers - prioritized on the basis of revenue - that provide airlines with a...

In this thesis, we investigate the batch sizing problem for a custom-job production facility. More specifically, given a production system that has been assigned several different types of custom jobs, we try to derive batching policies to minimize the expected total time that a job spends in...

In this thesis we study three problems related to financial modeling. First, we study the problem of pricing Employee Stock Options (ESOs) from the point of view of the issuing company. Since an employee cannot trade or eectively hedge ESOs, she exercises them to maximize a subjective criterion...

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, aviation security policy has remained a focus of national attention. We develop mathematical models to address some prominent problems in aviation security. We explore first whether securing aviation deserves priority over other potential...

In this thesis, we examine some puzzles in finance from an evolutionary perspective. We first provide a literature review of evolutionary psychology, and discuss three main findings; the frequentist hypothesis, applications from risk-sensitive optimal foraging theory, and the cheater detection...

Major package delivery companies employ hundreds of thousands of people, generate billions of dollars in revenues and operate very large fleets of ground vehicles ranging from custom- built package cars to large tractors and trailers. A crucial point for the profitability of these companies is,...