Networked Infrastructure systems deliver services and/or products from point to point along the network. Demand for the services provided by such systems is typically cyclic, creating inefficiencies in capacity utilization. Congestion pricing provides incentives to shift demand from peak time periods to lower demand periods. This effectively increases the capacity of the system without the need...

We establish a model of insurance pricing with the assumption that the insurance price, insurer investment returns, and insured losses are correlated stochastic processes. We consider the effect of demand on price where the objective of the pricing model is to maximize the expected utility of the insurer’s terminal wealth. Based on a Hamilton–Jacobi–Bellman (HJB) equation, we simultaneously sol...

This paper develops an analytically tractable general equilibrium model of inventory dynamics. Inventories are introduced into a standard RBC model through a precautionary stockout-avoidance motive. Under persistent aggregate demand shocks, the model is broadly consistent with the U.S. business cycle and key features of inventory behavior, including (i) a large inventory stock-to-sales ratio an...

The Internet is changing the automotive industry as the traditional manufacturer and dealer structure faces increased threats from third party e-tailers. Dynamic pricing together with the Direct-to-Customer business model can be used by manufacturers to respond to these challenges. Indeed, by coordinating production and inventory decisions with dynamic pricing, the automotive industry can incre...

multistage stochastic programming is a key technology for making decisions over time in an uncertain environment. one of the promising areas in which this technology is implementable, is medium term planning of electricity production and trading where decision makers are typically faced with uncertain parameters (such as future demands and market prices) that can be described by stochastic proc...

In the 1990’s, the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) initiated a domestication programme of indigenous fruit trees (IFTs) in Southern Africa to increase farmhousehold income through farmer-led tree planting and thus conserve bio-diversity. From the farmer's point of view planting domesticated IFTs is an investment under uncertainty and irreversibility. As timing of planting is flexible, real op...

The rapid pace of productivity growth since the mid-1990s has been attributed to improvements in technology, particularly in the areas of information processing and communications. From e-mail and cell phones to inventory management and robotic manufacturing techniques, new ways of doing business—facilitated by the use of new types of capital equipment—have transformed the workplace. However, t...