Managers wish to motivate workers to exert effort. There is large literature on the use of wages and monetary incentives for this purpose, but in practice the “honor” or “prestige” of an award can be a significant motivator as well, unless the award is given so often that its prestige is...

We consider the optimal control problem of an M <Superscript> X </Superscript>/G(Q)/1 batch service queueing system with Q∞. So, we assume that customers arrive according to a compound Poisson process and are served in batches not greater than the finite service capacity Q. The control problem involves the determination...</superscript>

The control problem of controlling ruin probabilities by investments in a financial market is studied. The insurance business is described by the usual Cramer-Lundberg-type model and the risk driver of the financial market is a compound Poisson process. Conditions for investments to be...

The advertising activity has an important role in the introduction of a new product. We tackle the problem of determining the advertising plan for preparing the product introduction, having the objectives of maximizing the product image at the launch time, minimizing the campaign length and...

We consider the problem of maximizing terminal utility in a model where asset prices are driven by Wiener processes, but where the various rates of returns are allowed to be arbitrary semimartingales. The only information available to the investor is the one generated by the asset prices and, in...

We study the classical real option problem in which an agent faces the decision if and when to invest optimally into a project. The investment is assumed to be irreversible. This problem has been studied by Myers and Majd (Adv Futures Options Res 4:1–21, 1990) for the case of a complete...

We are interested in structures and efficient methods for mixed-integer nonlinear programs (MINLP) that arise from a first discretize, then optimize approach to time-dependent mixed-integer optimal control problems (MIOCPs). In this study we focus on combinatorial constraints, in particular on...

This paper addresses an optimal inventory control in a supply chain in which customers arrive at a facility according to a Poisson process and the facility provides service which takes exponential amounts of time, using items supplied by an outside supplier with exponential lead time process....

We consider Markov Decision Processes under light traffic conditions. We develop an algorithm to obtain asymptotically optimal policies for both the total discounted and the average cost criterion. This gives a general framework for several light traffic results in the literature. We illustrate...

We analyze the connection between the optimal solutions of minimum time and fixed final time optimal control problems. We discuss some controllability conditions which guarantee the equivalence of the two problems. In fact, under such conditions, not only does an optimal control...