Resale Price Maintenance under Asymmetric Information

We study Resale Price Maintenance (RPM) in a successive monopolies framework with adverse selection and moral hazard. The analysis compares both the private and the wel- fare properties of vertical contracts based on retail price restrictions with those derived under quantity .xing arrangements (QF). With information asymmetries, both types of vertical contracts entail a double marginalization driven by the presence of information rents, distributed to a privately informed downstream retailer, which forces the upstream producer to sell above its marginal costs. When .rms behave non-cooperatively, the up- stream producer always prefers RPM to QF, and the impact of RPM on consumers. surplus is ambiguous. With joint-pro.ts maximizing contracts, instead, whenever RPM maximizes constrained joint-pro.ts it also raises consumers.surplus, thereby producing a Pareto improvement relative to QF contracts.

Changes in initial COPD treatment choice over time and factors influencing prescribing decisions in UK primary care : a real-world study

Acknowledgements Samantha Holmes (CircleScience, an Ashfield Company, part of UDG Healthcare plc) and Paul Hutchin (contracted to CircleScience, an Ashfield Company, part of UDG Healthcare plc) provided medical writing assistance. Funding The study was funded by Novartis Pharma AG (Basel, Switzerland).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Operational strategies for offshore wind turbines to mitigate failure rate uncertainty on operational costs and revenue

Several operational strategies for offshore wind farms have been established and explored in order to improve understanding of operational costs with a focus on heavy lift vessel strategies. Additionally, an investigation into the uncertainty surrounding failure behaviour has been performed identifying the robustness of different strategies. Four operational strategies were considered: fix on fail, batch repair, annual charter and purchase. A range of failure rates have been explored identifying the key cost drivers and under which circumstances an operator would choose to adopt them. When failures are low, the fix on fail and batch strategies perform best and allow flexibility of operating strategy. When failures are high, purchase becomes optimal and is least sensitive to increasing failure rate. Late life failure distributions based on mechanical and electrical components behaviour have been explored. Increased operating costs because of wear-out failures have been quantified. An increase in minor failures principally increase lost revenue costs and can be mitigated by deploying increased maintenance resources. An increase in larger failures primarily increases vessel and repair costs. Adopting a purchase strategy can negate the vessel cost increase; however, significant cost increases are still observed. Maintenance actions requiring the use of heavy lift vessels, currently drive train components and blades are identified as critical for proactive maintenance to minimise overall maintenance costs

Optimization of Process Parameters by Reliability-Based Uncertainty Modeling of Cold Rolling Process

Metal working processes can often be expressed in a reliability format. Information about present and anticipated reliabilities in metallurgical processes, in conjunction with decision models, provides a rational and powerful decision-making tool. In practice uncertainties arise in predicting service or lifetime loads in considering the variability in material properties, workmanship, process dimensions, environmental conditions, inspection test data, maintenance and so on. A wide range of materials with different elastic moduli, yield stresses, strain hardening and friction co-efficient constitute specific characteristics in a metal working process. Thus a metal working process may be defined as a collection of one or more related objects. Consequently, decisions related to rolling processes are based on uncertain or incomplete information. Finite element based process simulation can offer valuable guidelines on how the current process parameters should be modified to meet the requirements on the process and the product. This work represents a continued effort towards developing a sound methodology for modelling uncertainties in rolling process with reference to the reliability assessment. Based on the information obtained from the finite element simulation, investigations are conducted to assess the structural integrity of final product. The objective of this work is to use probabilistic methods to represent sources of uncertainty and to attain optimum set of points of rolling by iteration to achieve controlled microstructure of the finished product

Distributed Services with Foreseen and Unforeseen Tasks: The Mobile Re-allocation Problem

In this paper we deal with a common problem found in the operations of security and preventive/corrective maintenance services: that of routing a number of mobile resources to serve foreseen and unforeseen tasks during a shift. We define the (Mobile Re-Allocation Problem) MRAP as the problem of devising a routing strategy to maximize the expected weighted number of tasks served on time. For obtaining a solution to the MRAP, we propose to solve successively a multi-objective optimization problem called the stochastic Team Orienteering Problem with Multiple Time Windows (s-TOP-MTW) so as to consider information about known tasks and the arrival process of new unforeseen tasks. Solving successively the s-TOP-MTW we find that considering information about the arrival process of new unforeseen tasks may aid in maximizing the expected proportion of tasks accomplished on time.location;reliability;routing;distributed services

Bibliographic and Technical Problems in Implementing a National Library Network

published or submitted for publicatio

Climate change in game theory context

The aim of this paper is to survey the game theory modelling of the behaviour of global players in mitigation and adaptation related to climate change. Three main fields are applied for the specific aspects of temperature rise: behaviour games, CPR problem and negotiation games. The game theory instruments are useful in analyzing strategies in uncertain circumstances, such as the occurrence and impacts of climate change. To analyze the international players’ relations, actions, attitude toward carbon emission, negotiation power and motives, several games are applied for the climate change in this paper. The solution is surveyed, too, for externality problem