The global emergence of city bicycle hire schemes has recently received a lot of attention in the performance and modelling research community. A particularly important challenge is the accurate forecast of future bicycle migration trends, as these assist service providers to ensure availability of bicycles and parking spaces at docking stations, which is vital to match customer expectations. T...

I TOUCHED BRIEFLY ON THE evolution of runway visual range (more commonly known as “RVR”) in my article about approach light systems (“Lights, Camera, Action!” August IFRR). This article discusses low-visibility operations and the differences between visibility and RVR, both from the regulatory and operational viewpoints. Because some readers make their living by flying under “for-hire” rules, I...

We analyze a simple dynamic framework where sellers are capacity constrained over the length of the game. Buyers act strategically in the market, knowing that their purchases may affect future prices. The model is examined when there are single and multiple buyers, with both linear and non-linear pricing. We find that, in general, there are only mixed strategy equilibria and that sellers get a ...

This paper experimentally tests the predictions of a principal-agent model in which the agent has biased beliefs about his ability. Overconfident workers are found to earn lower wages than underconfident ones because they overestimate their expected payoff, and principals adjust their offers accordingly. Moreover, the profit-maximizing contract distorts effort by varying incentives according to...

Divorce and the Excess Burden of Lawyers We present a model where divorcing spouses can choose to hire lawyers in their divorce process. Spouses encounter incentives as in the classical prisoners’ dilemma: Despite the zero sum nature of the game and the lawyers’ fees, each spouse has an incentive to hire a lawyer. We propose a simple institutional setting allowing for joint lawyers in order to ...

In this study, we examined internship as a recruitment and selection process. On the basis of impression management theory, we hypothesized that both organizations and interns make efforts to impress the other party during the internship if they intend to hire or be hired. Using longitudinal data collected at 3 points from 122 intern–supervisor dyads in the United States, we found that 60% of i...

Firms posting job openings in an online labor market were randomly assigned minimum hourly wages. When facing a minimumwage, fewer firms made a hire, but those workers they did hire were paid a higher wage. However, the reduction in hiring was not large, even at the highest minimum wage imposed. In contrast, minimumwages substantially reduced hours-worked, across cells. Firms facing a higher mi...

This paper shows that it is individually rational for agents in a firm to develop and exhibit status concerns. Workers are, by their choices of status concerns, able to transfer surplus from the the firm to themselves. As expected, relative concerns are shaped by the relative strengths and weaknesses of the workers in the firm. Surprisingly, a firm’s profit is reduced relative to the benchmark ...

Should an organization hire people with similar backgrounds or with di®erent backgrounds? We formulate this question within the framework of team theory. The team manager must ̄ll n jobs and can choose the type of each of the agents she hires. The type of an agent determines his information structure and his market wage. We show that if the team's payo® function is supermodular, then the manage...

U ncertainty is an amorphous concept. It refl ects uncertainty in the minds of consumers, managers, and policymakers about possible futures. It is also a broad concept, including uncertainty over the path of macro phenomena like GDP growth, micro phenomena like the growth rate of fi rms, and noneconomic events like war and climate change. In this essay, I address four questions about uncertaint...