I study the dynamic mechanism design problem of a monopolist selling a fixed number of service slots to randomly arriving, short-lived buyers with heterogeneous values. The fully optimal mechanism is a non-standard auction in which bidders’ payoffs are non-monotone in their opponents’ bids. Because its complexity may make the fully optimal mechanism too costly to implement, I also study the opt...

PURPOSE We examine the processes and document the calendar time required to activate phase II and III clinical trials by an oncology group: the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG). METHODS Setup steps were documented by (a) interviewing ECOG headquarters and statistical center staff, and committee chairs, (b) reviewing standard operating procedure manuals, and (c) inspecting study recor...

Complex temporal expressions are widely used in daily life. A calendars is one of the important examples for this kind of expressions. In this paper, we study the query language on general calendars. A set of operators for calendar algebra is formed. Several formulas are put forward for the purpose of query optimization. Other properties including monotonicity, closure and uniqueness of operato...