In this paper we study a model that minimizes the sum of production, employment smoothing, and inventory costs subject to a schedule of known demand requirements over a finite time horizon. The three instrumental variables are work force producing at regular-time, work force producing on...

We consider a deterministic, single product, discrete review, finite time horizon inventory problem, called the multiple set-up cost problem. The holding cost in each period is a nondecreasing (and sometimes concave) function. The distinguishing feature of our model is the ordering cost function...

Using the technique employed by the author in an earlier paper, the existence of an optimal stationary policy that can be obtained from the usual functional equation is again established in the presence of a bound (not necessarily polynomial) on the one-period reward of a semi-Markov decision...

In the standard search problem there is an infinite pool of items whose distribution of values is known. A decision maker draws an item from the pool, observes its value, and decides whether to keep it or to draw another item. He can keep only one item, and he seeks the item with the largest...

We consider a semi-Markov decision process with arbitrary action space; the state space is the nonnegative integers. As in queueing systems, we assume that {0, 1, 2, ..., n + N} is the set of states accessible from state n in one transition, where N is finite and independent of n. The novel feature...

We consider the problem of scheduling the production of a single product at each instant during a time horizon of length T (\leqq \infty ) so as to minimize the average cost per unit time; backlogging of demand and disposal of stock are not allowed. Two types of costs are incurred; the holding cost...

Economists' view of liquidity is askin to Supreme Court Justice Stewart's View of hard-core pornography: I shall not ... attempt further to define (it) .... But I know it when I see it. Embedding the process of selling an asset in a search environment enables us to provide an exact definition of...

In the design of procurement contracts, cost sharing, wherein the contractor receives a fixed fee plus a fraction of his cost, is common when the cost for completing the project is uncertain. We determine the best cost-sharing contract between a risk-neutral project manager and a risk-averse...