To verify whether a transferable utility game is exact, one has to check a linear inequalityfor each exact balanced collection of coalitions. This paper studies the structure andproperties of the class of exact balanced collections. Comparing the definition of exactbalanced collections with the...

We present constant approximative policies for preemptive stochastic scheduling. We derive policies with a guaranteed performance ratio of 2 for scheduling jobs with release dates on identical parallel machines subject to minimizing the sum of weighted completion times. Our policies as well as...

We consider the problem of minimizing the makespan on restricted related parallel machines. In restricted machine scheduling each job is only allowed to be scheduled on a subset of machines. We study the worst-case behavior of local search algorithms. In particular, we analyze the quality of...

The performance of wireless networks suffers from collisions. These occur when multiplewireless nodes transmit simultaneously, and their signals interfere with each other. To reduce collisions, nodes may use a randomized protocol to regulate their behavior. An example of such a protocol is...

Consider a situation in which a company sells several different items to a set of customers. However, the company is not satisfied with the current pricing strategy and wishes to implement new prices for the items. Implementing these new prices in one single step mightnot be desirable, for...

Network design and network synthesis have been the classical optimization problems intelecommunication for a long time. In the recent past, there have been many technologicaldevelopments such as digitization of information, optical networks, internet, and wirelessnetworks. These developments...

We study the design of optimal mechanisms in a setting where job-agents compete for being processed by a service provider that can handle one job at a time. Each job has a processing time and incurs a waiting cost. Jobs need to be compensated for waiting. We consider two models, one where only...

In this paper we consider the two-machine ow shop problem with varying machine speeds. We present an algorithm which determines the optimal permutations for all machine speeds in O ( n log n ) time, where n is the number of jobs. To achieve this bound on the running time, the algorithm employs...

Our work contributes to the game-theoretic analysis of bargaining by providing additional non-cooperative support to the well-known Nash bargaining solution. In particular, in the present paper we study a model of non-cooperative multilateral bargaining with a very general proposer selection...

Since the introduction of exible manufacturing systems, researchers have investigated the various planning and scheduling problems that the users of such systems are facing. Several of these problems are not encountered in more classical production settings, and so called tool mamagement...