To reduce the risk of disruption of lifeline systems during the emergency following an earthquake (or any other disaster) preventive interventions on the existing concerned facilities are necessary, but often hindered by the limitation of the available economic resources. In this paper,...

Recent research has empirically characterized the buyer-seller relationship as dynamically evolving from one discrete state to another. Conventional wisdom would suggest that a customer in a higher relationship state that has a higher transaction value would also have greater lifetime value to...

The problem of determining specific utility preference from observed optimal resource allocation procedures is considered. In special cases this is solved completely. Partial solutions and their limitations in this process are also discussed.

A great challenge of the current European water policy is the implementation of volumetric water pricing in the agricultural sector, especially of Mediterranean countries, where irrigation is a necessary precondition of agricultural production and farmers’ income, but also the major consumer...