Regulating arrivals to a queue

Speaker: Professor Moshe Haviv (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

I will deal with the standard single server queue model with waiting costs and service rewards. Special attention will be given to the issue of waiting times, externalities and the difference between them in terms of decision making. Two criteria will be looked at when dealing with the decision whether or not to join the queue: individual optimization and social optimization. The concept of Nash equilibrium and its applications to unobservable queues will be introduced. Next we will look at the issue of how to regulate the queue, namely how to make individual customer behave in a socially optimal way. This goal can be achieved by the introduction of entry fees or contracts, or by selecting an appropriate queue discipline. The above will be then repeated for the observable version of this decision making.