Ant Colony Optimization is a relatively new meta-heuristic that has proven its quality and versatility on various combinatorial optimization problems such as the traveling salesman problem, the vehicle routing problem and the job shop scheduling problem.(...)

TWe perform a novel analysis of the fitness landscape of thejob-shop scheduling problem (JSP). In contrast to other well-known combinatorial optimization problems, we show that the landscape of the JSP is non-regular, in that the connectivity of solutions is variable.

This article conducts a computational study for the Job Shop Scheduling Problem. The focus lies on the structure of the search space as it appears for local search.

A general model for job shop scheduling is described which applies to static, dynamic and non-deterministic production environments. Next, a Genetic Algorithm is presented which solves the job shop scheduling problem ...

In this paper we evaluate an indivisible investment project that is carried out in a corporation under very simple premises. In particular, we discuss a one-period model with certainty, the pure domestic case and proportional tax rates. Surprisingly, the decision problem turns out to be rather...

Contracts paying a guaranteed minimum rate of return and a fraction of a positive excess rate, which is specified relative to a benchmark portfolio, are closely related to unit-linked life-insurance products and can be considered as alternatives to direct investment in the underlying benchmark....

The allocation of decision rights is an integral component of designing organizational architecture. Economists have long understood the importance of co-locating decision rights with the knowledge that is valuable to those decisions. Following this prescription, marketing scholars have...

In this paper we first show that the gains achievable by integrating pricing and inventory control are usually small for classical demand functions. We then introduce reference price models and demonstrate that for this class of demand functions the benefits of integration with inventory control...