In a successive vertical oligopoly, a set of "sellers" produce some input to be transformed into a final product by a set of "buyers". On this two-sided market, a firm's profit increases with the number of firms of the other type and decreases with the number of firms of its own type. We examine...

After reviewing some of the basic preprocessins techniques for handling safety stocks and multilevel problems, we discusss a variety of aspects arising particularly in small and large bucket (time period) models such as stars-ups, changeovers, minimum batch sizes, choice of one or two set-ups...

Two types of agents interact on a pre-existing free platform. Agents value positively the presence of agents of the other type but may value negatively the presence of agents of their own type. We ask whether a new platform can find fees and subsidies so as to divert agents from the existing...

BC-PROD is a prototype modelling and optimization system designed and able to tackle a wide variety of the discrete-time lot-sizing problems arising both in the practice and in literature. To use BC-PROD, the user needs to formulate his/her problem as a mixed integer program using XPRESS-MP's...

The basic idea of crowdfunding is to raise external finance from a large audience (the “crowd”), where each individual provides a very small amount, instead of soliciting a small group of sophisticated investors. The paper develops a model that associates crowdfunding with pre-ordering and...

We present and study a mixed integer programing model that arises as a sub-structure in any industrial applications. This model provides a relaxation of various capacitated production planning problems, more general fixed charge network flow problems, and other structured mixed integer programs....

The authors analyze the optimal replacement of assets under continuous and discontinuous technological change. They investigate the variable lifetime of assets in an infinite-horizon replacement problem. Due to deterioration, the maintenance cost increases when the asset becomes older. Because...

Carbon leakage in this pape ris the phenomenon whereby Electricity Intensive Industries subject to harsh environmental standards move their activity or part of it to more environmentally lenient regions. Carbon leakage has been mentioned as a possible outcome of the EU Emission Trading Scheme....

This paper provides theoretical foundations to the contemporaneous increase in computer usage, human capital and multi-tasking observed in many OECD countries during the 1990s. The links between work organization, technology and human capital is modelled by establishing the conditions under...

Some behaviors, ideas or technologies spread and become persistent in society, whereas others vanish. This paper analyzes the role of social influence in determining such distinct collective outcomes. Agents are assumed to acquire information from others through a certain sampling process that...