B9801-01: PhD Seminar in Operations Management

Columbia Business School

Spring 2001


Basic info:

Professor: Costis Maglaras
Office: Uris 409
Tel: (212)-854.4240
Email:[email protected]
Office hours: Tuesdays 10am-noon.
Course schedule: Wednesdays 11:45am-2:15pm Uris 329

Basic course info
 



 

Tentative course outline:
 

Pricing

(1/24) Class 1: Single server, single class models ( Presenter: CM)

[1.] Mendelson, H . (1985), ``Pricing computer services: queueing effects," Comm. of the ACM, 28(3), 312-321. (paper )

[2.] Stidham, Jr., S. (1985), ``Optimal control of admission to a queueing system," IEEE Trans. on Aut. Control, 30(8), 705-713.

A related paper by P. Naor on "The regulation of the queue size by levying tolls" -- this is one of the first papers in the area and analyzes a simple model where the customers can observe the queue length. (paper )

A set of notes on queueing models and specifically, product form networks (product_form.pdf )
 

(1/31) Class 2: Single server, multi-class models (Presenter: Roy Mashal, Discussant: Joern Meissner)

[3.] Mendelson, H . and Whang, S . (1990), ``Optimal incentive-compatible priority pricing for the M/M/1 queue," Operations Research, 48(5), 870-883.

[4.] Van Mieghem, J. (2000), ``Price and service discrimination in queueing systems: incentive compatibility of Gc$\mu$ policy," Management Science, 46(9), 1249-1267. ( paper )
 

(2/7) Class 3: Multi-class network (Presenter: Ben Wang, Discussant: Roy Mashal)

[5.] Kelly, F.P. , Maullo, A.K., Tan, D.K.H. (1998), ``Rate control for communication networks: shadow prices, proportional fairness and stability," J. of Oper. Res. Soc., 49, 237-252. ( paper )

[6.] Kelly, F.P. (1997), ``Charging and rate control for elastic traffic," European Trans. On Telecommunications, 8, 33-37. (This paper contains an essential result used in [5].) (paper )

Many interesting papers and links can be found in Frank Kelly's web page .
 
 

Revenue management
 

(2/14) Class 4: Single leg models (Presenter: Joern Meissner, Discussant: Bin Yu)

[7.] Lee, T.C. and Herch, M. (1993), ``A model for dynamic airline seat inventory control with multiple seat bookings," Transportation Science, 27(3), 252-265.

[8.] Brumelle, S.L. and McGill, J.I. (1993), ``Airline seat allocation with multiple nested fare classes," Operations Research, 41(1), 127-137.

[9.] Gallego, G. and van Ryzin, G.J . (1993),  ``Optimal Dynamic Pricing of Inventories with Stochastic Demand Over Finite Horizons", Management Science,  40, 999-1020.

(We will discuss [7,8] --these are typical revenue management papers for the single class model. [9] formulates the problem in the spirit of [10,11,12] that we cover next week.)
 

(Professor Avi Mandelabum's short course has been cancelled!!)
 

(2/21) Class 5: Network models (Presenter: CM, Discussant: Srini Krishnamoorthy)

[10.] Gallego, G. and van Ryzin, G.J. (1997), ``A Multiple Product Dynamic Pricing Problem with Applications to Network Yield Management," Operations Research, 45, 24-41.

[11.] Talluri, K. and van Ryzin, G.J. (1998), ``An Analysis of Bid-Price Controls for Network Revenue Management," Management Science, 44, 1577-1593. (paper )

[12.] Cooper, W. (2001), ``Asymptotic behavior of allocation policies for revenue management," preprint.

We will review the results in [10,11]; [12] is closely related to [10,11]. Finally, some RM applications. [13] studies congestion pricing for network resources, and [14] gives an MDP formulation for a related problem where the service provider for an M/M/1 queue dyamically adjusts the service rate of the system. See also the review paper by McGill and van Ryzin.

[13.] Paschalidis, I. and Tsitsiklis, J. (2000), ``Congestion-dependent procing of network services," IEEE/ACM Trans. on Networking, 8, 171-184. (paper )

[14.] George, J. and Harrison, J.M . (2001), ``Dynamic control of a queue with adjustable service rate," To appear in Operations Research. (paper )
 

(2/28) Class 6: Choice demand models (Presenter: Srini Krishnamoorthy, Discussant: Nan Yang)

[15.] Talluri, K. and van Ryzin, G.J . (2001), ``A discrete choice model os yield management," preprint.

[16.] Anderson, S.P., de Palma, A. and Thisee, J-F. (1996), ``Discrete choice theory of product differentiation" chapter 2, MIT Press, Cambridge MA.

We will go through [15] with some reference to the main results presented in chapter 2 of [16].
 

(3/7) Class 7: Competition (Presenter: Bin Yu, Discussant: Zhidong Wang)
 
[18.] Lederer P. and L. Li (1997), "Pricing, Production, Scheduling and Delivery-Time Competition," OR Vol.45(3) p.407-420.

[19.] Netessine, S. and Shumsky, R. (2001), ``Revenue management games,", preprint .

[20.] Cachon, G. and Harker, P. (2001), ``Service competition, outsourcing, and co-production in a queueing game," preprint.
 
We will cover [18], which is a natural extension of  [1,3] to a setting with perfect competition.


(3/21) Class 8: Dynamic pricing for a make-to-order queue
(Presenter: CM)

Working paper of CM. Discuss problem formulation, fluid + diffusion approximations for state dependent queues, LQR.
 
 

Auctions
 

(3/28) Class 9: Introduction to auctions (Presenter:Jingyi Li,  Discussant: Gustavo Vulcano)

[21.] Riley, J.G. and Samuelson, W.F. (1981), ``Optimal auctions," The American Economic Review, 71(3), 381-392. ( paper )

[22.] Wolfstetter, E. (1996), ``Auctions: an introduction," Journal of economic surveys,10(4), 367-420.
 

(4/4) Class 10: Introduction to auctions (cont.) (Presenter: CM)

Review [21,22], discuss [24], briefly mention common values and winner's curse, and review extensions to multi-unit, correlated (affiliated) values, etc.

[23.] Myerson 1981, Optimal Auiction Design, Math. O.R. Vol. 6 (1): 58-73,
 

(4/11) Class 11: Procurement auctions (Presenter: Gustavo Vulcano, Discussant: Jingyi Li)

[24.] Gallien J. and Wein L. (2001), ``Design and analysis of a smart market for industrial procurement," preprint. (paper )
 

(4/18) Class 12: Smart markets for network pricing and control (Pres.:Zhidong Wang , Disc.: CM)

[25.] MacKie-Mason, J.K. and Varian, H. (1995), ``Pricing congestible network resources," IEEE J. Sel. Areas Communication, 13, 1141-1149. (paper )

[26.] Wellman, M.P., Walsh, W.E., Wuman, P.R. and MacKie-Mason, J.K. (2000), ``Auction protocols for decentralized scheduling," To appear in Games and Economic Behavior. (paper )
 

(4/25) Class 13: Project presentations
 



Downloading tip:If there are problems when downloading some of the pdf files you can do the following: 1.) from the course web page "right click (with your mouse)" on the appropiate link;2.) among other options you will get the choice "Save Link As" that youshould follow; 3.) that will allow to save the file in your hard disk; 4.) now, print the file from your hard drive. It should work!

To view the Portable Document Format files (PDFs)on this site, downloada free Acrobat Reader