Probabilistic resource pooling games

We study a setting with a single type of resource and with several players, each associated with a single resource (of this type). Unavailability of these resources comes unexpectedly and with player‐specific costs. Players can cooperate by reallocating the available resources to the ones that need the resources most and let those who suffer the least absorb all the costs. We address the cost savings allocation problem with concepts of cooperative game theory. In particular, we formulate a probabilistic resource pooling game and study them on various properties. We show that these games are not necessarily convex, do have non‐empty cores, and are totally balanced. The latter two are shown via an interesting relationship with Böhm‐Bawerk horse market games. Next, we present an intuitive class of allocation rules for which the resulting allocations are core members and study an allocation rule within this class of allocation rules with an appealing fairness property. Finally, we show that our results can be applied to a spare parts pooling situation.     

全面深化改革 实现我国社会主义市场经济地位的转变

党的十八届三中全会的最大亮点和理论创新之一就是,提出了要实现市场对资源配置的决定性作用。这是思想解放的重大突破,也是深化经济体制改革以及引领其他领域改革的基本方针。阐述了改革开放35年党对市场经济地位和作用认识的历史进程,以及我国社会主义市场经济地位转变的必然性,提出了全面深化经济体制改革、实现市场经济地位转变的举措。     

中国超算技术赶超发展模式探析

超级计算是解决国家安全、经济建设、科学进步、社会发展和国防建设等领域重大挑战性问题的重要手段,是各国科技发展中必争的战略制高点。通过调查和实证,重点分析了中国超算技术追赶中政府的引导作用和企业作为市场主体的作用。面向领域的战略需求,在财政能力非常有限的情况下,政府通过长期资助,形成厚实的知识和人才队伍积累;面向科技创新,政府主导全国的集群创新实现中国超算登顶,并建设国家超算基础设施;面向全面发展,积极发展超算应用,并按照企业是市场主体的原则,通过企业参与超算竞争研制,实现技术溢出和市场突破。超算技术发展模式可以为其他高技术领域发展提供借鉴经验。     

DESIGNING A VIABLE PREDICTION MARKET TO FORECAST DEFENSE ACQUISITION COST AND SCHEDULE OUTCOMES

This paper is the first to demonstrate a viable prediction market that successfully forecasts defense acquisition cost and schedule outcomes, and to provide insights for defense executive decision‐making. Already used in private industry, prediction markets can also accurately forecast outcomes and their associated risks for government programs. Using virtual money, prediction markets allow traders to ‘bet’ on some future outcome. This market mechanism turns out to be a relatively simple and accurate way to discover, aggregate, and communicate to a defense executive the collective market’s beliefs about the likelihood of an eventual outcome of an acquisition program of interest.     

Estimating defence budget saving from disarmament: the United States’ case

Probing the technology in the production of US national defence by using a dynamic cost‐function model with adjustment costs, this paper evaluates the effect of reducing the level of national defence on the defence budget saving. Our inquiry involves estimating the defence production structure without output data for non‐market goods that are normally unavailable. Our findings include: (i) the United States behaves rationally to minimize cost in the production of national defence; (ii) the adjustment costs are larger in disarmament than in military build‐up; (iii) due to the adjustment costs peculiar to disarmament, the defence budget saving from disarmament appears small, but cutbacks allow great savings on the defence budget.     

The Effects of Terrorism on Turkish Financial Markets

Abstract

In this research, we analyzed how Turkish financial markets and foreign investors in the stock market reacted to the terror attacks in Turkey. Our analysis, which was performed using the terror index for the stock market and the foreign exchange market, revealed that returns, abnormal returns, and cumulative abnormal returns were not affected by the terror attacks; however, foreign investors in the stock market were affected. When the geographic regions of the terror attacks were analyzed, the findings showed that foreign investors were negatively affected mainly by the terror attacks that occurred in southeast Anatolia. Attack type and target type were important only for foreign investors. An evaluation of the interaction between the terror attacks and the markets with the involvement of the terrorist organizations indicated that only the foreign investors in the stock market were affected by Al-Qaeda and PKK-linked terror attacks. An evaluation of the effect of terror attacks in foreign countries on Turkish financial markets revealed no effect on the domestic stock market and foreign exchange markets. We also examined the volatility spillovers from the terror index to the stock market and found that terrorist attacks increased the volatility of the stock market.     

Market entry strategy in the presence of market spillovers and efficiency differentiation

Firms form various alliances or use brand extensions to enter new markets in order to improve their operational efficiency and create a positive spillover. However, they do not always know the implications of these strategies for market entry and multimarket competition because the sale of products in one market can have negative spillover effects on product sales in other markets. We present an analytical framework to examine whether and how (i.e., by choosing alliance entry or independent entry) competing firms should enter a market in a situation where market spillovers occur when a firm enters a spillover-producing market to sell products that may increase or decrease the consumers' willingness to pay for products in the primary market. Our analysis shows that the operational efficiency (or quality differentiation ability) of firms in a spillover-producing market varies, and hence, the impact of market spillovers differs for firms. We identify the key factors, such as bargaining power, brand value difference in the primary market, and the extent of efficiencies and spillovers, that determine the firms benefitting from the different entry strategies. Specifically, we show that firms would be more willing to choose an alliance strategy to enter a spillover-producing market if the negative spillover is small and alliance efficiency is high. In contrast, if an alliance entry is not favored, the firms' relative operational efficiency is crucial for them to decide whether to enter the market independently under moderate spillover conditions. Finally, we show the implications of market entry strategies for managers.     

均衡聚类市场拍卖机制的异构无人机集群任务规划方法

针对大规模异构无人机集群的全局任务规划问题,提出一种基于均衡聚类市场拍卖机制的任务规划方法。对无人机群协同合作完成任务的场景进行分析,综合任务聚类和无人机联盟的优势,建立了通用性较高的任务规划模型。考虑到对无人机群负载均衡的需求,融合和改进了K-means聚类算法和市场拍卖机制,形成一种综合考虑路程消耗和任务消耗的均衡聚类市场拍卖算法。在拍卖过程中引入平衡参数,通过计算旅行商问题来修正平衡参数,保证无人机群在负载均衡的同时整体成本不断降低。仿真结果表明,使用均衡聚类市场拍卖机制的任务规划方法能够在较短时间内完成异构无人机群的复杂任务规划,保证无人机群负载均衡的同时,整体成本和总时间上也有较好表现,具有一定的实际应用价值。     

A multi‐stage stochastic programming approach for network capacity expansion with multiple sources of capacity

In networks, there are often more than one sources of capacity. The capacities can be permanently or temporarily owned by the decision maker. Depending on the nature of sources, we identify the permanent capacity, spot market capacity, and contract capacity. We use a scenario tree to model the uncertainty, and build a multi‐stage stochastic integer program that can incorporate multiple sources and multiple types of capacities in a general network. We propose two solution methodologies for the problem. Firstly, we design an asymptotically convergent approximation algorithm. Secondly, we design a cutting plane algorithm based on Benders decomposition to find tight bounds for the problem. The numerical experiments show superb performance of the proposed algorithms compared with commercial software. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 63: 600–614, 2017     

Supply chain coordination with shelf‐space and retail price dependent demand and heterogeneous retailers

We consider supply chain coordination in which a manufacturer supplies some product to multiple heterogeneous retailers and wishes to coordinate the supply chain via wholesale price and holding cost subsidy. The retail price is either exogenous or endogenous. The market demand is described by the market share attraction model based on all retailers'shelf‐spaces and retail prices. We obtain optimal solutions for the centralized supply chain, where the optimal retail pricing is a modified version of the well‐known cost plus pricing strategy. We further get feasible contracts for the manufacturer to coordinate the hybrid and decentralized supply chains. The manufacturer can allocate the total profit free to himself and the retail market via the wholesale price when the retail price is exogenous, but otherwise he cannot. Finally, we point out that different characteristics of the retail market are due to different powers of the manufacturer, and the more power the manufacturer has, the simpler the contract to coordinate the chain will be. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2010