Abstract— We consider the problem of traffic grooming in WDM ring networks. Traffic grooming is a variant of the wellknown logical topology design problem, and is concerned with the development of techniques for combining low speed traffic components onto high speed channels in order to minimize network cost. Previous studies have focused on aggregate representations of the network cost. In thi...

In this thesis, we survey approximate dynamic programming (ADP) methods and test the methods with the game of Tetris. We focus on ADP methods where the costto-go function J is approximated with 5r, where 4 is some matrix and r is a vector with relatively low dimension. There are two major categories of methods: projected equation methods and aggregation methods. In projected equation methods, t...

Although consumer profiling advocates tout benefits from personalization, consumer advocacy groups oppose profiling in online markets because of concerns about privacy and price discrimination. Policies such as opt-out or opt-in that provide consumers the option to voluntarily participate in profiling are the favored compromise. We compare voluntary profiling to no profiling and show that volun...

We present a new class of service for location based social networks, called the Flexible Group Spatial Keyword ‹ery, which enables a group of users to collectively €nd a point of interest (POI) that optimizes an aggregate cost function combining both spatial distances and keyword similarities. In addition, our query service allows users to consider the trade-o‚s between obtaining a suboptimal ...

Supply chain management that considers the flow of raw materials, products and information has become a focal issue in modern manufacturing and service systems. Supply chain management requires effective use of assets and information that has far reaching implications beyond satisfaction of customer demand, flow of goods, services or capital. Aggregate planning, a fundamental decision model in ...

The constant increases in electricity tax costs and the mandatory contracting of power demand advance by companies connected to high-voltage electrical system drive organizations improve energy planning their production processes. In addition, market uncertainties make only stochastic methods insufficient for forecasting future demand. To fill this gap, study proposes a model that integrates co...

We define aggregate productivity growth as the change in aggregate final demand minus the change in the aggregate cost of primary inputs. We show how to aggregate plant-level data to this measure and how to use plant-level data to decompose our measure into technical efficiency and reallocation components. This requires us to confront the “non-neoclassical” features that impact plant-level data...

We study identification of combinatorial valuations from aggregate demand. Each utility function takes as arguments subsets or, alternatively, quantities of the multiple goods. We exploit mathematical insights from auction theory to generically identify the distribution of utility functions. In our setting, aggregate demand for each item is observable while demand for bundles is not. Neverthele...

This paper presents a model in which financial innovations explain three widely discussed stylized facts regarding trends in economic volatility over the past two decades. Aggregate volatility of real variables such as output has fallen. In particular, the covariance between firm and industry activities has declined, and so has employment volatility for the majority of firms. In contrast, the v...