Course allocation is one of the most complex issues facing any university, due to the sensitive nature of deciding which subset of students should be granted seats in highly-popular (market-scarce) courses. In recent years, researchers have proposed numerous solutions, using techniques in integer programming, combinatorial auction design, and matching theory. In this paper, we present a four-pa...

Generic drugs have a key role to play in the efficient allocation of financial resources for pharmaceutical medicines. Policies implemented in the countries with a high rate of generic drug use, such as Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States, are reviewed, with consideration of the market structures that facilitate strong competition. Savings in the...

The progress in modern information technology (IT) leads to changes in the organization of economic activity and enables new and innovative organizational structures. One example is the emergence of electronic markets. Electronic markets at the moment are primarily seen as a substitute for conventional markets. But there is also a tendency that electronic markets, because of sinking transaction...

Distributed resource allocation in multiagent systems is hard to solve. Since the allocation will be done distributively, agents are not aware of others that use the resources that they need and in what quantity. That is, because the agents do not have access to the entire list of allocations, they can attempt to use resources that are not available. One naive approach is to allow agents to try...

Abstract Summary 1. Tragic Choices in COVID times; 2. Criteria for the Allocation of Scarce Healthcare Resources; 3. Liability Professionals and Institutions; 4. Possible solutions?

Questions of resource allocation can pose practical and ethical dilemmas for clinicians. In the Aristotelian conception of distributive justice, the unequal allocation of a scarce resource may be justified by morally relevant factors such as need or likelihood of benefit. Even using these criteria, it can be difficult to reconcile completing claims to determine which patients should be given pr...

Preemptive kidney transplantation, as a treatment modality for end-stage renal disease, offers higher clinical advantages compared to maintenance dialysis. Nevertheless, preemptive transplantations raises ethical concerns, particularly regarding medical resource allocation. From an ethical perspective, health care decisions should be focused on the patient's needs. Nevertheless, a fair distribu...

We review some recent theoretical and empirical developments in the study of sex allocation in birds. The advent of reliable molecular sexing techniques has led to a sharp increase in the number of studies that report biased offspring sex ratios in birds. However, compelling evidence for adaptive sex allocation in birds is still very scant. We argue that there are two reasons for this: (i) stan...

Spectrum is a valuable, scarce and finite natural resource that is needed for many different applications, so efficient use of the scarce radio spectrum is important for accommodating the rapid growth of wireless communications. Spectrum auctions are one of the best-known market-based solutions to improve the efficiency of spectrum use. However, Spectrum auctions are fundamentally differen...