Information spreading in a population can be modeled as an epidemic. Campaigners (e.g. election campaign managers, companies marketing products or movies) are interested in spreading a message by a given deadline, using limited resources. In this paper, we formulate the above situation as an optimal control problem and the solution (using Pontryagin’s Maximum Principle) prescribes an optimal re...

We consider a Markovian l-unit system which is subject to shocks causing it to deteriorate in each of its stochastically dependent components. The net reward produced by the system is assumed to be an l-dimensional function of the amounts of deterioration of the components. After every shock the controller has the option to replace the system by a new one. The objective is to maximize the long-...

In this research note, we investigate segmentation opportunities for social planners such as government agencies, nonprofits, and public organizations. These opportunities arise when the potential products are vertically (quality) differentiated and the consumers are heterogeneous in their preferences toward quality. In these cases, whether to offer quality differentiated products and what qual...