This paper considers a health-care delivery system with two noncooperative parties: a purchaser of medical services and a specialized provider. A dynamic principal-agent model that captures the interaction between the two parties is developed. In this model, patients arrive exogenously, receive...

Motivatedby the exceptionally high mortality statistics of dialysis patients and the ongoing debate about the adequacy of the current reimbursement for dialysis in the United States, we pursue a detailed analysis of the dialysis delivery system. The analysis is based on a multiclass fluid model...

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Organ exchanges are expected to increase the utilization of living donors and to alleviate the critical shortage of organs for transplantation. The typical arrangement involves a direct exchange between two blood-type incompatible donor-candidate pairs. An alternate possibility is an indirect...

We address the procurement of new components for recyclable products in the context of Kodak's single-use camera. The objective is to find an ordering policy that minimizes the total expected procurement, inventory holding, and lost sales cost. Distinguishing characteristics of the system are...

In kidney allocation, transplant candidates may have private information about their propensity to enjoy good outcomes after transplantation or about their relative expected improvement in quality of life after transplantation. This paper develops a mechanism design model to investigate the...

We examine the competition between procurement auctions and long-term relational contracts that emerges from the increased usage of electronic marketplaces. Procurement auctions create supply chain efficiencies by selecting the least costly bidder, and long-term relational contracts ensure the...

The principal-agent paradigm, in which a principal has a primary stake in the performance of some system but delegates operational control of that system to an agent, has many natural applications in operations management (OM). However, existing principal-agent models are of limited use to OM...

This paper develops and analyzes a principal-agent model for product specification and production motivated by Ücore buyingÝ decisions at an automobile manufacturer. The model focuses on two important elements of the ÜcoreÝ buyer's responsibility: (1) assessing the supplier's capability, and...