A subset of harm reduction strategies encourages individuals to switch from a harmful addictive good to a less harmful addictive good; examples include e-cigarettes (substitutes for combustible cigarettes) and methadone and buprenorphine (substitutes for opioids). Such harm reduction methods have...

BackgroundClinical guidelines commonly recommend preventive treatments for people above a risk-threshold. Therefore, decision-makers must have faith in risk-prediction tools and model-based cost-effectiveness analyses for people at different levels of risk. Two problems that arise are inadequate...

Some harm reduction strategies encourage individuals to switch from a harmful addictive good to a less harmful addictive good. This approach is controversial, with advocates claiming it helps switching to a less harmful substance, and opponents claiming it may lead to new substance abuse. This...

Using a dynamic model of the control of an infectious disease, we derive the conditions under which eradication will be optimal. When eradication is feasible, the optimal program requires either a low vaccination rate or eradication. A high vaccination rate is never optimal. Under special...

People deny health risks, invest too little in disease prevention, and are highly sensitive to the price of preventative health care, especially in developing countries. Moreover, private sector R and D spending on developing-country diseases is almost non-existent. To explain these empirical...

Context. The problem of optimal control of flow parameters of a conveyor-type transport system containing sections with reversible conveyors is considered. The object of the stady was an analytical model of a reversible transport conveyor for synthesizing an algorithm for optimal control of the...

The article is devoted to the synthesis of optimal control of the conveyor belt with the accumulating input bunker. Much attention is given to the model of the conveyor belt with a constant speed of the belt. Simulation of the conveyor belt is carried out in the one-moment approximation using...

This article establishes the Poisson optional stopping times (POST) method by [22] as a near-universal method for solving liquidity-constrained American options, or, equivalently, penalised optimal-stopping problems. In this setup, the decision maker is permitted to "stop", i.e. exercise the...

We optimize a large country's currency supply network for its central bank. The central bank provides currency to all branches (who in turn serve consumers and commerce) through its network of big vaults, regional vaults, and retail vaults. The central bank intends to reduce its total...