Measuring the attractiveness of academic journals: A direct influence aggregation model

Various journal-ranking algorithms have been proposed, most of them based on citation counts. This article introduces a new approach based on the reciprocal direct influence of all pairs of a list of journals. The proposed method is assessed against an opinion-based ranking published in 2005 for 25 operations research and management science (OR/MS) journals, and … Read more

An inventory model with shortages for imperfect items using substitution of two products

Inventory models with imperfect quality items are studied by researchers in past two decades. Till now none of them have considered the effect of substitutions to cope up with shortage and avoid lost sales. This paper presents an EOQ approach for inventory system with shortages and two types of products with imperfect quality by one … Read more

Fixed points and variational principles with applications to capability theory of wellbeing via variational rationality

In this paper we first develop two new results of variational analysis. One is a fixed point theorem for parametric dynamic systems in quasimetric spaces, which can also be interpreted as an existence theorem of minimal points with respect to reflexive and transitive preferences for sets in products spaces. The other one is a variational … Read more

Robust Stable Payoff Distribution in Stochastic Cooperative Games

Cooperative games with transferable utilities belong to a branch of game theory where groups of players can enter into binding agreements and form coalitions in order to jointly achieve some objectives. In a cooperative setting, one of the most important questions to address is how to establish a payoff distribution among the players in such … Read more

An Improved Stochastic Optimization Model for Water Supply Pumping Systems in Urban Networks

This study investigates a pump scheduling problem for the collection, transfer and storage of water in water supply systems in urban networks. The objective of this study is to determine a method to minimize the electricity costs associated with pumping operations. To address the dynamic and random nature of water demand, we propose a two-stage … Read more

Derivative-free Methods for Mixed-Integer Constrained Optimization Problems

Methods which do not use any derivative information are becoming popular among researchers, since they allow to solve many real-world engineering problems. Such problems are frequently characterized by the presence of discrete variables which can further complicate the optimization process. In this paper, we propose derivative-free algorithms for solving continuously differentiable Mixed Integer NonLinear Programming … Read more

Choice Based Revenue Management for Parallel Flights

This paper describes a revenue management project with a major airline that operates in a fiercely competitive market involving two major hubs and having more than 30 parallel daily flights. The market has a number of unusual characteristics including (1) almost half of customers choose not to purchase the tickets after booking; (2) about half … Read more

On Auction Models of Conflict with Network Applications

We consider several models of complex systems with active elements and show that the auction mechanism appears very natural in attaining proper equilibrium states, even in comparison with game theory ones. In particular, network equilibria are treated as implementation of the auction principle. An additional example of resource allocation in wireless communication networks is also … Read more

Reclaimer Scheduling: Complexity and Algorithms

We study a number of variants of an abstract scheduling problem inspired by the scheduling of reclaimers in the stockyard of a coal export terminal. We analyze the complexity of each of the variants, providing complexity proofs for some and polynomial algorithms for others. For one, especially interesting variant, we also develop a constant factor … Read more

Joint Variable Selection for Data Envelopment Analysis via Group Sparsity

This study develops a data-driven group variable selection method for data envelopment analysis (DEA), a non-parametric linear programming approach to the estimation of production frontiers. The proposed method extends the group Lasso (least absolute shrinkage and selection operator) designed for variable selection on (often predefined) groups of variables in linear regression models to DEA models. … Read more