Stochastic optimization identifies the asset allocation that minimizes the probability of exhausting the retirement portfolio, thereby minimizing risk, from unmanaged (constant) and optimally managed withdrawals over the retirement life span. Optimal equity compositions and minimized probabilities of prematurely exhausting the portfolio increase with higher withdrawal rates and earlier retireme...

Quality loss functions have found widespread application in production engineering and today are an indispensable part of quality management. However, they share an obstacle with most other quality concepts concerning their limited communicability to top management. In the allocation of financial resources, a company’s executive board is commonly interested in the profit implications of competi...

Thirteen years after the beginning of the democratization process in South Africa, many radical socio-political and institutional transformations have taken place in the country. Unlike during the Apartheid era, natural resource management and governance, particularly in the water sector, is nowadays based on concepts and criteria such as decentralization, economic efficiency, environmental sus...

In this work, we consider the problem of resource allocation in multi-class networks, where users specify the value they attach to obtaining different amounts of resource by means of a utility function. We develop a resource allocation scheme that maximizes the average aggregate utility per unit time. We formulate this resource allocation problem as a Markov decision process. We present numeric...

We consider a barter market with multiple types of indivisible goods. Konishi et al. [J. Math. Econ. 35 (2001) 1–15] showed that the core of this market may be empty. We define a normal form game for this market and consider its equilibrium outcomes. Assuming separable strict preferences, we show that the game has a unique Coalition-proof Nash allocation. This Coalition-proof Nash allocation is...

In this paper we propose a framework for an energy efficient scheduler for multiuser SCFDMAwith queue state information (QSI) and quality of service (QoS) constraints. Resource allocation is formulated as a two-stage problemwhere resources are allocated in both time and frequency. The scheduling policy is obtained in two stages for the intraand inter-user allocations respectively. A near optima...

Orthogonal Variable Spreading Factor codes are valuable resources in CDMA systems and should be properly managed. Thus Dynamic Code Assignment (DCA) schemes of OVSF codes in WCDMA systems can be used in order to increase spectral efficiency, enhance statistical multiplexing and minimize codeblocking probability [1]. The objective of this paper is to present a first evaluation of the delay requi...

The authors propose a new advanced spectrum management (ASM) methodology for wideband code division multiple access systems based on the concept of coupling matrix, which is able to capture inter-cell interactions. The proposed methodology takes into account the fact that each cell can be associated to more than one carrier and aims at liberating some carriers in large geographical zones, so th...

Ð The protection of pharmaceutical innovations is being dramatically extended as much of the developing world introduces patent protection for new drug products. This change in intellectual property rights may lead to more research on drugs to address developing country needs. We use new survey data from India, the results of interviews, and measures of research and development (R&D) constructe...

In this work, we present an architecture for interactive distributed multimedia information services. The service consists of three basic parts, the clients, the access servers, and the content servers. Clients manage the presentation of the requested multimedia documents, while also ensure the synchronization among various involved media. Special policies for the synchronized presentation of m...