管科系系列讲座第217-219期

管科系系列讲座第217期

 

时间:2018年11月23日(周五)10:00

地点:史带楼603

主持人:冯天俊教授(商务分析与运营创新研究中心)

主讲嘉宾:Yang Liu, Associate Professor, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University

TitleFollow the Crowd to Avoid Congestion with Unknown Service Rate

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of unknown service rate on customers' joining behavior in service systems. In a single-server queue with known service rate, customers always prefer the shorter-queue strategy when multiple joining equilibria exist. When the service rate is unknown to customers, we identify the follow the crowd (FTC) behavior and show that there exist at least one joining equilibria and that all of them have a threshold structure; when multiple equilibria exist, customers prefer the longer-queue strategy when the realizations of service rate differ significantly. In a two-server two-queue system with random assignment of one faster server and one slower server, we show that the shorter-queue strategy (with random tie breaking for identical queue lengths) is always an equilibrium; when the faster and slower servers differ significantly in speed, a pure strategy in which customers sometimes join the longer queue is an equilibrium and dominates the shorter-queue strategy in terms of expected customer utility.

 

管科系系列讲座第218期预告

 

时间:2018年12月10日(周一)14:30

地点:史带楼303

主持人:戴悦教授

主讲嘉宾:Baojun Jiang is an associate professor of marketing at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

TitleManagerial Optimism in a Competitive Market

Abstract: Research has shown that many managers and entrepreneurs tend to be optimistic and are inclined to believe that negative shocks happen to them less frequently than to others. However, there is also evidence suggesting that such optimism is often inaccurate in reality and managerial optimism can lead to the failure of a company. We develop a game-theoretic model to investigate the impact of managerial optimism on firms’ performance in a competitive market. Our analysis shows that a manager’s optimism about demand can increase the firm’s profit. Moreover, only one firm having managerial optimism can be win-win for both firms in a duopoly, because it can increase the level of product quality differentiation between the firms, alleviating price competition. However, if both firms have optimistic managers, the benefit of increased differentiation disappears, and firms are weakly worse off, compared with the case of both firms having realistic managers. Our research suggests that a firm should hire a realistic manager when managerial optimism is already pervasive in a competitive market.  

 

 

管科系系列讲座第219期预告

 

时间:2018年12月11日(周二)13:30

地点:史带楼302

主持人:戴悦教授

主讲嘉宾:Baojun Jiang is an associate professor of marketing at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

TitleEffects of Monitoring Technology on the Insurance Market

Abstract: The car-insurance market is plagued with problems of adverse selection and moral hazard. In-vehicle data recorders can collect massive amount of information about the drivers’ risk factors and driving behaviors. This monitoring technology allows the firm to set its insurance premium based on better estimates of the driver’s risk factors, alleviating the adverse-selection problem. In addition, the firm can charge a premium based on the customer’s recorded driving behaviors; this helps to reduce the driver’s moral hazard. We provide an analytical framework to examine the impact of such monitoring technology on the insurance firms and the consumers. Our analysis shows that in a duopoly one firm’s adoption of the monitoring technology may benefit both firms, because the firms have incentives to target different segments of drivers, leading to less intense competition in the market and reducing the surplus of the drivers. We show that if one firm has adopted the monitoring technology, its competitor may have no incentive to adopt that technology even if it is free.   

 

管理科学系

2018-11-14