This study considers a supply chain that consists of n retailers, each facing a newsvendor problem, and m warehouses. The retailers are supplied with a single product via some warehouses. In these warehouses, the ordered amounts of goods of these retailers become available after some lead time....

We develop a general framework for the analysis of decentralized distribution systems. We carry the analysis in terms of a simplified model which entails N retailers who face stochastic demands and hold stocks locally and/or at one or more central locations. An exogenously specified fraction of...

Retail assortment planning can have a tremendous impact on a retailer's bottom-line performance. Over the past years, retailers have increasingly relied on their leading manufacturers for recommendations regarding the assortment to be offered to the consumers in a particular category, a practice...

We propose an extension of the competitive newsvendor model to investigate the impact of quick response under competition. For this purpose, we consider two retailers that compete in terms of inventory: customers that face a stockout at their first-choice store will look for the product at the...

We investigate a simple dynamic model of firm behavior in which firms compete by investing in capacity that is used to provide a good or service to their customers. There is a fixed total market of customers whose demands for the good or service are random and who divide their patronage between...

The newsvendor model is designed to decide how much of a product to order when the product is to be sold over a short selling season with stochastic demand and there are no additional opportunities to replenish inventory. There are many practical situations that reasonably conform to those...

Should a firm charge on a per-use basis or sell subscriptions when its service experiences congestion? Queueing-based models of pricing primarily focus on charging a fee per use for the service, in part because per-use pricing enables the firm to regulate congestion--raising the per-use price...

We consider a simple game in which strategic agents select arrival times to a service facility. Agents find congestion costly and, hence, try to arrive when the system is underutilized. Working in discrete time, we characterize pure-strategy Nash equilibria for the case of ample service...

When managing projects with considerable uncertainty, such as those arising in construction, defense, and new product development, it is customary for a manufacturer (project manager) to offer contracts under which each supplier (contractor) receives a prespecified payment when she completes her...

Decentralized organizations may incur inefficiencies because of scheduling issues associated with competition among decision makers (DMs) for limited resources. We analyze the decentralization cost (DC), i.e., the ratio between the Nash equilibrium cost and the cost attained at the centralized...