As cities grow, the negative effects of congestion start to play their part, often affecting the cities' ability to become and remain competitive. Although many studies have focused on these negative effects, the links between pollution and city competitiveness are less explored. This paper...

Frontmatter -- Preface -- Contents -- Tables -- Charts -- CHAPTER I. Introduction -- CHAPTER II. Structure of the Gulf Coast refinery market -- CHAPTER III. The conditions of entry into the Gulf Coast refinery market -- CHAPTER IV. Price behavior in the Gulf Coast refinery market -- CHAPTER V....

The second part of the thesis focuses on a different stochastic problem of finding the optimal hedging points in a manufacturing flow control system. Our simulation-based method allows solving large scale systems that are considered very difficult to solve by current standards in the literature.