We consider a two-person zero-sum stochastic game with an innnite time horizon. The payoo is a linear combination of expected total discounted rewards with diierent discount factors. For a model with a countable state space and compact action sets, we characterize the set of persistently optimal (sub-game perfect) policies. For a model with nite state and action sets and with perfect informatio...

This paper will review and critique the recent telecommunications proxy cost models that have been developed for the industry. While these cost models go into great detail on the engineering aspect of the telephone network, they lack a fundamental understanding of economics and finance, i.e. they fail to apply the appropriate, traditional techniques of engineering economics. Some do not use dis...

We investigate the computability of problems in probabilistic planning and partially observable infinite-horizon Markov decision processes. The undecidability of the string-existence problem for probabilistic finite automata is adapted to show that the following problem of plan existence in probabilistic planning is undecidable: given a probabilistic planning problem, determine whether there ex...

Over the last decade, there have been a significant amount of research works on compound renewal risk models with dependence. These risk models assume a dependence relation between interclaim times and claim amounts. In this paper, we pursue their investigation. We apply change of measure techniques within the compound renewal risk models with dependence to obtain exact expressions for the Gerb...

OBJECTIVE To examine the between-hospital variation of charges and discounted prices for uncomplicated vaginal and caesarean section deliveries, and to determine the institutional and market-level characteristics that influence adjusted charges. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS Using data from the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD), we conducted a cross-sec...

We consider a discrete time Markov Decision Process, where the objectives are linear combinations of standard discounted rewards, each with a diierent discount factor. We describe several applications that motivate the recent interest in these criteria. For the special case where a standard discounted cost is to be minimized, subject to a constraint on another standard discounted cost but with ...