Bücher der Reihe Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems

This book examines the problem of maintenance planning and scheduling in industrial production systems. It presents two practically relevant, deterministic mathematical models: the capacitated planned maintenance problem (CPMP) and the weighted uncapacitated planned maintenance problem (WUPMP).

The authors present a new formal framework for finding the long-run competitive market equilibrium through short-run equilibria by exploiting the operating policies and plant valuations. This ¿short-run approach¿ develops ideas of Boiteux and Koopmans. Applied to the peak-load pricing of electricity generated by thermal, hydro and pumped-storage plants, it gives a sound and practical method of valuing the fixed assets¿in this case, the river flows and the geological sites suitable for reservoirs. Its main mathematical basis is the producer¿s short-run profit maximization programme and its dual; their solutions have relatively simple forms that can greatly ease the fixed-point problem of solving for the general equilibrium. Since the optimal values (profit and cost functions) are usually nondifferentiable¿this is so when there are joint costs of production such as capacity constraints¿nonsmooth calculus is employed to resolve long-standing discrepancies between textbook theory andindustrial reality by giving subdifferential extensions of basic results of microeconomics, including the Wong-Viner Envelope Theorem.

These lectures aim to help readers understand the logics and nature of the main indicators of inequality and poverty, with special attention to their social welfare underpinnings. Inequality and poverty are thus considered to be partial aspects of the welfare evaluation of the opportunities in a given society.

Since the days of Lev Pontryagin and his associates, the discipline of Optimal Control has enjoyed a tremendous upswing - not only in terms of its mathematical foundations, but also with regard to numerous fields of application, which have given rise to highly active research areas.

This book has grown out of a desire to explore the possibilities of using optimizing models in transportation planning. The gravity model is here studied as the solution to an optimizing model.

Cost Analysis is an emerging sub-discipline of Economics and Operations Research. This book is directed to researchers in Economics, Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, and Managerial Accounting.

This book is an exploration of the ubiquity of ambiguity in decision-making under uncertainty. It presents various essays on behavioral economics and behavioral finance that draw on the theory of Black Swans (Taleb 2010), which argues for a distinction between unprecedented events in our past and unpredictable events in our future. The defining property of Black Swan random events is that they are unpredictable, i.e., highly unlikely random events. In this text, Mandelbrot¿s (1972) operational definition of risky random unpredictable events is extended to Black Swan assets ¿ assets for which the cumulative probability distribution or conditional probability distribution of random future asset returns is a power distribution. Ambiguous assets are assets for which the uncertainties of future returns are not risks. Consequently, there are two disjoint classes of Black Swan assets: Risky Black Swan assets and Ambiguous Black Swan assets, a new class of ambiguous assets withunpredictable random future outcomes.The text is divided into two parts, the first of which focuses on affective moods, introduces affective utility functions and discusses the ambiguity of Black Swans. The second part, which shifts the spotlight to affective equilibrium in asset markets, features chapters on affective portfolio analysis and Walrasian and Gorman Polar Form Equilibrium Inequalities. In order to gain the most from the book, readers should have completed the standard introductory graduate courses on microeconomics, behavioral finance, and convex optimization. The book is intended for advanced undergraduates, graduate students and post docs specializing in economic theory, experimental economics, finance, mathematics, computer science or data analysis.

This textbook introduces readers to essential tools, techniques and methods for intertemporal and strategic modeling in economics. It presents a variety of analytical models covering both dynamic processes and strategic interaction. Students will learn the basic mechanisms associated with the intertemporal approach, on the one hand, and game theory, i.e., the strategic approach, on the other. In addition, a wide range of applications are explored, including growth models, labor markets, international trade, and individual decision-making. Intended for upper undergraduate and graduate students in economics and related fields with a background in mathematics and calculus, this textbook provides a comprehensive introduction to economic modeling and its applications. By avoiding excessive formalism and exploring straightforward examples and applications, it is optimally suited for graduate courses in economics and finance.

Economic efficiency analysis has received considerable worldwide attention in the last few decades, with Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) establishing themselves as the two dominant approaches in the literature. This book, by combining cutting-edge theoretical research on DEA and SFA with attractive real-world applications, offers a valuable asset for professors, students, researchers, and professionals working in all branches of economic efficiency analysis, as well as those concerned with the corresponding economic policies. The book is divided into three parts, the first of which is devoted to basic concepts, making the content self-contained. The second is devoted to DEA, and the third to SFA. The topics covered in Part 2 range from stochastic DEA to multidirectional dynamic inefficiency analysis, including directional distance functions, the elimination and choice translating algorithm, benefit-of-the-doubt composite indicators,and internal benchmarking for efficiency evaluations. Part 3 also includes exciting and cutting-edge theoretical research on e.g. robustness, nonparametric stochastic frontier models, hierarchical panel data models, and estimation methods like corrected ordinary least squares and maximum entropy.