We introduce a new approach for pricing energy derivatives known as tolling agreement contracts. The pricing problem is reduced to a linear program. We prove that the optimal operating strategy for a power plant can be expressed through optimal exercise boundaries (similar to the exercise boundaries for American options). We find the boundaries as a byproduct of the pricing algorithm. The sugge...

This paper studies optimal access pricing for natural monopoly networks with large sunk costs and uncertain revenues. Using techniques from the option pricing literature, we show that the optimal access price corresponds to a risk-free form of the Efficiency Component Pricing Rule (ECPR), that is, where the opportunity cost is based on the risk free rate of return. We also show that at levels o...

We study the effects of different pricing strategies available to a continuous review inventory system with capacitated supply, which operates in a fluctuating environment. The system has a single server with exponential processing time. The inventory holding cost is nondecreasing and convex in the inventory level, the production cost is linear with no set-up cost. The potential customer demand...

Cloud computing promises on-demand provisioning of resource to applications and services. In cloud computing, a provider leases its computing resources in the form of virtual machines to users, and a price is charged for the period they are used. Static pricing is the dominant pricing strategy in today’s market but dynamic pricing helps to improve the revenue. The main challenge is to design an...

Product pricing strategy and online word-of-mouth both influence consumer purchase. There have been increasing interests and conflict results on how to optimize seller’s pricing strategy in dealing with the interaction between price, consumer review, and sales. We focus on the early stage of product sales and develop a two-stage economic model. We find that the product type, that is, whether th...

Recent research on pricing multiclass loss networks [19] has shown that the performance of optimal static pricing approaches that of optimal dynamic (congestion-dependent) pricing in the many small sources limit. In our own work with similar models, we have found it difficult to obtain large gains over static pricing in realistic settings, even when the many small sources assumption is violated...

We study the problem of how to optimize a cloud service provider’s pricing policy so as to better compete with other providers. Different from previous work, we take both the evolution of the market and the competition between multiple cloud providers into consideration while optimizing the pricing strategy for the provider. Inspired by the real situations in today’s cloud market, we consider a...

We propose a new scheme of `automatic pricing' for digital contents, and describe an implemented system as well as concrete pricing algorithms for it. Automatic pricing refers to a methodology of automatically setting sales prices to optimal prices, based on past prices and sales. In particular, we consider the case in which automatic pricing is done in order to maximize the profit of an on-lin...

Pricing decisions of a two-echelon supply chain with one manufacturer and duopolistic retailers in fuzzy environment are considered in this paper.Themanufacturer produces a product and sells it to the two retailers, who in turn retail it to end customers. The fuzziness is associatedwith the customers’ demand and themanufacturing cost.The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of two ret...

We develop and analyze a model of pricing for digital products with discontinuous supply functions. This characterizes a number of information technology-based products and services for which variable increases in demand are fulfilled by the addition of "blocks" of computing or network infrastructure. Examples include internet service, telephony, online trading, on-demand software, digital musi...