Market characteristics, including intrinsic demand and customer sensitivity on price and product performance level, are distinct at different markets. Comparisons of various product development strategies in one market or two geographically separated markets are conducted for three classes of...

A market-based strategy is proposed for joint decisions on price, delivery time, service level, and supplier selection or investment. Product or service demand is modeled as a linear function of attributes including price, guaranteed delivery time, service level, or other quality-like...

Second language writing assessment is of great significance for second language researchers, teachers and learners. Studies of writing of different grade levels will provide detailed information about textual features in each grade and student’s writing development. In this study, a corpus of...

In the latter half of 1997, the monetary crisis that took place in Thailand triggered a financial crisis in Southeast Asia. The effects were soon felt in South Korea and Japan. Subsequently, other regions and countries of the world were adversely affected. In their analyses of the causes and...

Modern manufacturing systems are facing a globally competitive market to an extent not experienced before. This competitive pressure forces manufacturers to produce more products with shorter life span and better quality, yet at a lower cost. To succeed in this environment, manufacturing firms...

Based on the classic augmented Lagrangian multiplier method, we propose, analyze and test an algorithm for solving a class of equality-constrained non-smooth optimization problems (chiefly but not necessarily convex programs) with a particular structure. The algorithm effectively combines an...

In recent decades, a number of centrality metrics describing network properties of nodes have been proposed to rank the importance of nodes. In order to understand the correlations between centrality metrics and to approximate a high-complexity centrality metric by a strongly correlated...

Land use and land cover (LULC) change within a watershed is recognized as an important factor affecting hydrological processes and water resources. Modeling the hydrological effects of land-use change is important not only for after-the-fact analyses, but also for understanding and predicting...

With the expansion of Medicare, increasing attention has been paid to the behavior of elderly persons in choosing health insurance. This article investigates how the elderly use plan attributes to screen their Medicare health plans to simplify a complicated choice situation. The proposed model...