We study a stochastic processing network, in which each job requires the concurrent occupancy of a subset of links (servers/resources), and each link’s capacity is shared among job classes that require its service. The real-time allocation of the service capacity among job classes is determined by the so-called “proportional fair” allocation scheme, which allocates the capacity among job classe...

The term ‘bottleneck’ has been extensively used in operations management literature. Management paradigms like the Theory of Constraints focus on the identification and exploitation of bottlenecks. Yet, we show that the term has not been rigorously defined. We provide a classification of bottleneck definitions available in literature and discuss several myths associated with the concept of bott...

Core and peripheral contrasts in journey-to-work trip length can be interpreted as imputing the relative value of origin and destination accessibility (yielding theoretical proxies for rent and wages). Because the main variables are shown to be critically dependent on spatial structure, they may be interpreted as showing the shadow prices due to comparative location. There is also a unifying co...

By means of so-called virtual or shadow prices, short-run factor demands, short-run marginal costs, etc. can be derived from any long-run cost function. The traditional approach (short-run/restricted/conditional/variable cost functions) is criticized, and it is also shown that technological change, scale e!ects, etc. can be added to any cost function by means of disembodied factor-augmenting e$...

As the demand for cloud computing continues to increase, cloud service providers face the daunting challenge to meet the negotiated SLA agreement, in terms of reliability and timely performance, while achieving cost-effectiveness. This challenge is increasingly compounded by the increasing likelihood of failure in large-scale clouds and the rising impact of energy consumption and CO2 emission o...

Phenotype phase plane analysis is a linear optimization procedure which can be used to study the value of the objective function (a desired phenotype) as two variables (external substrates) vary simultaneously. Existing methods for phenotype phase plane analysis are based on computing shadow prices as defined in classical linear programming duality theory. Since different bases may produce diff...

We investigate the hypothesis that conditioning transfers to poor families on school attendance leads to a reallocation of household resources enhancing the human capital of the next generation, via the effect of the conditionality on the shadow price of human capital. We estimate the price effect of conditional transfers to mothers on intrahousehold allocations using data from a social program...

Carbon emission control becomes a challenge in recent years, and carbon emission trading is an effective way to curb carbon emission. This paper investigates the multi-item production planning problem with carbon cap and trade mechanism, in which a firm uses a common capacity and carbon emission quota to produce multiple products for fulfilling independent stochastic demands, and the firm can b...

MOTIVATION Although constraint-based flux analysis of knockout strains has facilitated the production of desirable metabolites in microbes, current screening methods have placed a limitation on the number knockouts that can be simultaneously analyzed. RESULTS Here, we propose a novel screening method named FastPros. In this method, the potential of a given reaction knockout for production of ...

We consider the class of linear programs that can be formulated with infinitely many variables and constraints but where each constraint has only finitely many variables. This class includes virtually all infinite horizon planning problems modeled as infinite stage linear programs. Examples include infinite horizon production planning under time-varying demands and equipment replacement under t...