In this paper, we consider deterministic (both fluid and discrete) polling systems with N queues with infinite buffers and we show how to compute the best polling sequence (minimizing the average total workload). With two queues, the best polling sequence is always periodic when the system is...

The use of various moving average (MA) rules remains popular with financial market practitioners. These rules have recently become the focus of a number empirical studies, but there have been very few studies of financial market models where some agents employ technical trading rules of the type...

We consider cooperative games with transferable utility (TU-games), in which we allow for a social structure on the set of players. The social structure is utilized to refine the core of the game. For every coalition the relative strength of a player within that coalition is induced by the...

The first three factors resulting from a principal components analysis of term structure data are in the literature typically interpreted as driving the level, slope and curvature of the term structure. Using slight generalisations of theorems from total positivity, we present sufficient...

A version of the classical secretary problem is studied, in which one is interested in selecting one of the b best out of a group of n differently ranked persons who are presented one by one in a random order. It is assumed that b is bigger than or equal to 1 is a preassigned number. It is...

In this paper we study Markov Decision Process (MDP) problems with the restriction that at decision epochs only a finite number of given Markovian decision rules may be applied. The elements of the finite set of allowed decision rules should be mixed to improve the performance. The set of...

In productivity analysis an important issue is to detect how external (environmental) factors, exogenous to the production process and not under the control of the producer, might influence the production process and the resulting efficiency of the firms. Most of the traditional approaches...

The present work applies several advanced spectral methods to the analysis of macroeconomic fluctuations in three countries of the European Union: Italy, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. We focus here in particular on singular-spectrum analysis (SSA), which provides valuable spatial and...

This paper develops a new equilibrium model of two-sided search where agents have multiple attributes and general payoff functions. The model can be applied to several substantive issues. Here we use it to provide a novel understanding of the separate effects of equal opportunities for women in...

In order to understand from where the profits or monetary profits of capitalists and firms emerge the author examined the phrase of Marx, 'Die Gesamtklasse der Kapitalisten kann nichts aus der Zirkulation herausziehen, was nicht vorher hineingeworfen war.' (The class of capitalists cannot...