“On the Relation of Various Reliability Measures to Each Other and to Game Theoretic Values

A variety of measures have recently been proposed for measuring the relative importance of individual components in the overall reliability of a system. Several of these seemingly different measures are very closely related under the conditions typically assumed in the reliability literature. The measures are also closely related to the probabilistic values of game theory; although the game theoretic literature predates the reliability literature by up to two decades, the similarities have apparently not been previously observed or exploited

The Design of Distributed Service Systems

A variety of practical situations involve supplying a particular commodity by some locations to satisfy the demand at others. If the demands and the costs of producing varying amounts of commodity at each location are known, then the question is how much commodity should be supplied by each location in order to minimize the total system cost. Under some relatively general conditions, there will be an optimal solution with the property that the vector of amounts supplied by the various locations is one of a distinguished set of points. In the case of star networks, this combinatorial nature may be exploited to give a very efficient algorithm for finding an optimal solution. A numerical example illustrates the results

On the Relation of Various Reliability Measures to Each Other and to Game Theoretic Values

A variety of measures have recently been proposed for measuring the relative importance of individual components in the overall reliability of a system. Several of these seemingly different measures are very closely related under the conditions typically assumed in the reliability literature. The measures are also closely related to the probabilistic values of game theory; although the game theoretic literature predates the reliability literature by up to two decades, the similarities have apparently not been previously observed or exploited.

The Design of Distributed Service Systems

A variety of practical situations involve supplying a particular commodity by some locations to satisfy the demand at others. If the demands and the costs of producing varying amounts of commodity at each location are known, then the question is how much commodity should be supplied by each location in order to minimize the total system cost. Under some relatively general conditions, there will be an optimal solution with the property that the vector of amounts supplied by the various locations is one of a distinguished set of points. In the case of star networks, this combinatorial nature may be exploited to give a very efficient algorithm for finding an optimal solution. A numerical example illustrates the results.

Second-price auctions with private entry costs

We study asymmetric second-price auctions under incomplete information. The bidders have potentially different, commonly-known, valuations for the object and private information about their entry costs. The seller, however, does not benefit from these entry costs. We calculate the equilibrium strategies of the bidders and analyze the optimal design for the seller in this environment

Auctioning Incentive Contracts: An Experimental Study

In this note, we experimentally examine the relative performance of price-only auctions and multi-attribute auctions. We do so in procurement settings where the buyer can give the winning bidder incentives to exert effort on non-price dimensions after the auction. Both auctions theoretically implement the surplus maximizing mechanism. Our experiment confirms this result. Moreover, we observe that the "pie" is shared the same in both auctions between buyer and suppliers both in theory and in the lab (after accounting for learning effects).Key words: Procurement; Price-only auctions; Multi-attribute auctions; Incentive Contracts; Laboratory Experimen