Serve or Skip: The Power of Rejection in Online Bottleneck Matching

We consider the online matching problem, where n server-vertices lie in a metric space and n request-vertices that arrive over time each must immediately be permanently assigned to a server-vertex.We focus on the egalitarian bottleneck objective, where the goal is to minimize the maximum distance between any request and its server. It has been demonstrated that while there are effective algorithms for the utilitarian objective (minimizing total cost) in the resource augmentation setting where the offline adversary has half the resources, these are not effective for the egalitarian objective. Thus, we propose a new Serve-or-Skip bicriteria analysis model, where the online algorithm may reject or skip up to a specified number of requests, and propose two greedy algorithms: GRI NN(t) and GRIN(t) . We show that the Serve-or-Skip model of resource augmentation analysis can essentially simulate the doubled-server capacity model, and then examine the performance of GRI NN(t) and GRIN(t)

How Well Do Doodle Polls Do?

Web-based Doodle polls, where respondents indicate their availability for a collection of times provided by the poll initiator, are an increasingly common way of selecting a time for an event or meeting. Yet group dynamics can markedly influence an individual’s response, and thus the overall solution quality. Via theoretical worst-case analysis, we analyze certain common behaviors of Doodle poll respondents, including when participants are either more generous with or more protective of their time, showing that deviating from one’s “true availability” can have a substantial impact on the overall quality of the selected time. We show perhaps counter-intuitively that being more generous with your time can lead to inferior time slots being selected, and being more protective of your time can lead to superior time slots being selected. We also bound the improvement and degradation of outcome quality under both types of behaviors

The Exchange Rate and Consumer Prices

This article reviews the empirical evidence on exchange rate pass-through to consumer prices in Australia over the inflation-targeting period. It finds that pass-through is relatively low at the aggregate level but is faster and larger for the prices of manufactured goods, which are often imported. There is some evidence that over the past decade exchange rate movements have been flowing through more quickly to retail prices for this subset of highly tradable goods. Looking ahead, the growth of the internet with the greater ability of households to compare prices and to buy from overseas are likely to result in smaller cross-country price differentials and more rapid pass-through from the exchange rate to prices.exchange rate; import prices; consumer prices; inflation; pass-through

Victims\u27 Participation at the Internatinal Criminal Court: Are Concessions of the Court Clouding the Promise?

The International Criminal Court (the ICC ), the world\u27s first permanent international criminal tribunal, is the first international criminal tribunal to grant to victims the right to participate in court proceedings, through their own representatives. This article, which is authored by a former ICC trial attorney, examines the ICC\u27s actual performance in providing victims\u27 participation in the Court\u27s first years of operation. The article posits, in part through statistical analysis, that the processing of applications to participate is consuming substantial Court resources while yielding participation for very few victims. The article attributes this failing to the readiness of the Pre-Trial and Trial Chambers to expand the participation right beyond the boundaries intended by the ICC\u27s creators, without agreeing on the standards for participation. The consequences, the article argues, have included the impairment of the efficiency of ICC proceedings, the undermining of defense rights, and the inability of most victims to obtain more than a theoretical right to participate. The article proposes means of strengthening the ICC victims\u27 participation framework and suggests ways in which victims and victims\u27 representatives might better vindicate the interests of victims of crimes within the ICC\u27s jurisdiction