Timing of information acquisition in a competitive environment

This article investigates the impact of timing on sellers' information acquisition strategies in a duopoly setting. Market uncertainty is captured by a representative consumer who has a private taste for the product's horizontal attribute, and both sellers can acquire this information either before (ex‐ante acquisition) or after (ex‐post acquisition) observing their own product qualities. We identify several conflicting effects of information acquisition that vary significantly in its timing and market characteristics. In the monopoly scenario, information acquisition is unambiguously beneficial and ex‐ante acquisition is the dominant option, because it helps a seller not only design the proper product but also craft better pricing strategy. By contrast, when there is competition, information acquisition eliminates the buffer role of market uncertainty and leads to the fiercest production or pricing competition, which makes the subsequent effects of acquisition detrimental, and a seller's payoff is nonmonotonic in terms of its acquisition cost. Moreover, compared with the ex‐ante information acquisition, ex‐post information acquisition normally generates higher sellers' equilibrium payoffs by postponing the timing of acquisition and maintaining product differentiation. Nonetheless, ex‐post information acquisition also provides the seller with greater acquisition incentive and occasionally makes him worse off than that in the ex‐ante scenario. Thus, in a competitive environment, having the option of information acquisition and flexibility in its timing can be both detrimental and irresistible. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 63: 3–22, 2016     

A strategic model for state compliance verification

The theory of directed graphs and noncooperative games is applied to the problem of verification of State compliance to international treaties on arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Hypothetical treaty violations are formulated in terms of illegal acquisition paths for the accumulation of clandestine weapons, weapons‐grade materials or some other military capability. The paths constitute the illegal strategies of a sovereign State in a two‐person inspection game played against a multi‐ or international Inspectorate charged with compliance verification. The effectiveness of existing or postulated verification measures is quantified in terms of the Inspectorate's expected utility at Nash equilibrium. A prototype software implementation of the methodology and a case study are presented. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 63: 260–271, 2016     

论寓教于乐的教学理念与设计

“寓教于乐”是一种理想的教育教学目标,也是大学教学改革的重点,教育游戏的出现为教学拓宽了道路,实践着“寓教于乐”的理念。通过参阅大量文献资料,对教育游戏的概念与现状进行了阐述,并提出了教育游戏的设计理念与策略,为教育游戏的设计提供指导和帮助。     

微分方程解的稳定性与周期性

综合利用相空间理论、压缩映像原理、算子的性质以及Liapunov泛函的方法,研究了具有无限时滞中立型泛函微分方程周期解的存在性、唯一性及稳定性问题,得到新的结果,推广了已有的结果。     

Timely exposure of a secret project: Which activities to monitor?

A defender wants to detect as quickly as possible whether some attacker is secretly conducting a project that could harm the defender. Security services, for example, need to expose a terrorist plot in time to prevent it. The attacker, in turn, schedules his activities so as to remain undiscovered as long as possible. One pressing question for the defender is: which of the project's activities to focus intelligence efforts on? We model the situation as a zero‐sum game, establish that a late‐start schedule defines a dominant attacker strategy, and describe a dynamic program that yields a Nash equilibrium for the zero‐sum game. Through an innovative use of cooperative game theory, we measure the harm reduction thanks to each activity's intelligence effort, obtain insight into what makes intelligence effort more effective, and show how to identify opportunities for further harm reduction. We use a detailed example of a nuclear weapons development project to demonstrate how a careful trade‐off between time and ease of detection can reduce the harm significantly.     

Purchase and retrieval competition for seasonal produce

We study the competition problem of purchase and multiretrieval of perishable seasonal produce, where wholesalers purchase and stock their products in the first period, and then retrieve and sell them in subsequent periods. We first consider the duopoly case and assume that the prices are exogenous and fluctuate. In each period, after the price realization, the wholesalers retrieve some stock from their warehouses to satisfy their demands. One wholesaler's unsatisfied customers can switch to another and be satisfied by its left retrieved products. Any unsold retrieved stock has no salvage value and any unsatisfied demand is lost. The unretrieved stock is carried to the next period at a perishable rate. The wholesalers compete for the substitute demand by determining their own purchase and retrieval quantities. We show the existence and uniqueness of a pure-strategy Nash equilibrium, and that the Nash equilibrium strategy has the simple “sell-down-to” structure. We also consider the general N-person game and show the existence of the Nash equilibrium, and characterize the structure of the equilibrium strategy for the symmetric case. In addition, we consider the case with endogenous prices, and show that the problem reduces to a repeated newsvendor game with price and inventory competition. We derive the conditions under which a unique Nash equilibrium exists and characterize the equilibrium strategy. Finally, we conduct numerical studies to examine the impacts of the model parameters on the equilibrium outcomes and to generate managerial insights.     

军事物流服务商准入标准设置和甄选研究综述

军事物流服务商甄选研究是新军事变革下供应商管理发展的重要方向,是有效完成后勤保障任务、顺利实施作战行动的重要保证。基于此,本文从供应商关系理论和发展、物流服务商指标体系选择以及结合其他方法对物流服务商甄选三个方面对国内外研究现状进行总结概述,对整个军事物流服务商的选择过程加以研究,将其科学客观地运用于军事物流服务商选择的实际操作中,对于加强军事物流服务商需求管理、提高选择质效以及优化工作流程具有重大意义。同时,分析现有研究成果的不足,并对其未来发展前景提出展望,针对性地提出了军事物流服务商初步准入标准以及后续复选的方法,为军事物流服务商选择体系的完善提供参考。     

激光焦点控制磁力驱动的控制特性实验对比分析

为了满足激光焦点控制系统的位置和速度响应要求,设计了一种轴向放置、轴向磁化的环形永磁体自复位的3自由度激光焦点磁力驱动微动平台。根据该微动平台的结构进行力学分析并建立动力学方程,在此基础上进行微动平台的比例、积分、微分控制实验和鲁棒控制实验。通过两种不同控制策略的对比分析,结果表明,两种控制策略都能实现微动平台的稳定驱动,但是在比例、积分、微分控制策略下,响应速度更好,在鲁棒控制策略下,抗干扰能力更好。     

Revisiting inspection game and inspector leadership through reaction networks

The inspection game is a two-player noncooperative game that models a situation where an inspector verifies whether the inspectee complies with the rules (on the assumption that the inspectee has the tendency to violate at least one of the rules). The usual approach in the analysis of this game seeks to find an optimal strategic inspection scheme for each of the two players yielding favorable payoffs. Recently, there have been some developments in the study of such games that use a mathematical structure known as reaction network involving a set of molecular species and the existing reactions among these species. In this paper, we use a reaction network to analyze the inspection game giving an alternative way of modeling the social situation. The molecular species play the role of the players' decision moves and their resulting gain or loss, while the reactions are the encounters of the decisions of the players which, as expected, yield payoffs. We reexamine the dynamics of the inspection game through the lens of reaction network theory and consider various situations that call for more detailed analyses such as equal or unequal reaction rates and inspection leadership. Conditions concerning reaction rates, initial population of decision species, benefits, and costs are determined in order to identify strategies that yield better payoffs both for the inspector and inspectee. These results illustrate practical insights rooted from the formulated simple game models.     

BTT导弹制导律研究综述

与STT导弹相比,BTT导弹在气动效率、机动能力、控制性能等方面具有明显优势,但其运动耦合特性也给传统研究框架下的制导律设计带来了挑战。本文针对BTT导弹制导律设计问题展开研究,首先描述了BTT导弹制导基本问题,分析了BTT导弹制导律设计的技术难点,需要综合考虑运动耦合、多约束、目标机动、弹体动态效应等因素,然后综述了国内外现代制导律设计的基本方法,将其分为双通道解耦法、球坐标法、现代几何法等,最后指出了BTT导弹制导律的进一步研究方向。