We investigate firms' re-manufacturing strategies in the case of a Cournot duopoly. On one hand, re-manufactured products cannibalize sales of new products by the same firm and hurt its profits. On the other, re-manufacturing can be a profitable marketing strategy to target different customer...

The method of variational inequalities is a useful theoretical tool in stochastic control, but there are few problems in which this method leads to an explicit solution. We present such a problem drawn from portfolio management. An agent can distribute his wealth between two investments, one...

In this paper we analyse a control‐theoretic model of a country possessing a finite amount of a non‐renewable resource. The country can both consume the indigenous resource and export it. Moreover, a substitute for the indigenous resource is available at a given backstop price. We obtain the...

We address the problem of finding an optimal financing mix of retained earnings and external equity for maximizing the value of a firm subject to random returns. The problem is formulated as a singular stochastic control for a diffusion process, and the value function satisfies a free-boundary...

We study infinite-horizon stochastic inventory problems with general demand distributions and piecewise linear concave ordering costs. Such costs arise in the important cases of quantity discounts or multiple suppliers. We consider the case of concave cost involving two linear segments. This...

Two types of quantity discounts are treated in the literature, namely, 'all units' discounts and incremental quantity discounts. In the all units quantity discounts model. the discount applies to every unit purchased. As a result, the total purchase cost is a discontinuous function of the...

This paper considers an infinite horizon stochastic production planning problem with demand assumed to be a continuous-time Markov process. Problems with control (production) and state (inventory) constraints are treated. It is shown that a unique optimal feedback solution exists. This solution...

An asymptotic analysis of a hierarchical manufacturing system with machines subject to breakdown and repair is presented. The machine fluctuations are much faster than the accumulation and discounting of costs, and this gives rise to a limiting problem in which the stochastic machine...

This paper summarizes the results of its detailed version, which considers optimal infinite horizon stochastic production planning problems with capacity and demand to be finite state Markov chains. Turnpike set concepts are introduced to characterize the optimal inventory levels. It is shown...

This paper presents a state-of-the-art review of asymptotic analyses of hierarchical manufacturing systems with stochastic demand and machines subject to breakdown and repair. The rate of change in machine states is much larger than the rate of fluctuation in demand and the rate of discounting...