2016 INFORMS Annual Meeting Program

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INFORMS Nashville – 2016
314
TC35
205A-MCC
Public Sector Service Operations
Sponsored: Manufacturing & Service Oper Mgmt, Service
Operations
Sponsored Session
Chair: Gad Allon, Northwestern University, Kellogg School of
Management, Evanston, IL, 60208, United States,
1 - Social Engagement And Learning In Massive Open Online
Courses: Evidence From Field Experiments
Dennis Zhang, Washington University, 8342 Delcrest Drive,
Apt 328, University City, MO, 63124, United States,
, Gad Allon, Jan A Van Mieghem
This paper studies how service providers can design social interaction among
participants and quantify the causal impact of that interaction on service quality.
We focus on education and analyze whether encouraging social interaction
among students improves learning outcomes in Massive Open Online Courses
(MOOCs), which are a new service delivery channel with universal access at
reduced, if not zero, cost. We analyze three randomized experiments in a MOOC
with more than 30, 317 students from 183 countries. Combining results from
these three experiments, we provide recommendations for designing social
interaction mechanisms to improve service quality.
2 - Menu Design In Subsidized Housing Lotteries
Peng Shi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
The right to purchase subsidized housing is often allocated by lottery. When
allocating multiple types of houses, one design question is whether to run the
lotteries in sequence or in parallel. When the lottery is done in parallel, which is
the case for example in Singapore for Build To Order (BTO) flats, another design
question is what menu of options to offer at the same time. We develop a
tractable model to help policy makers think about the welfare consequences of
different lottery designs.
3 - Matching Applicants To Apartments In The Nyc Public Housing
Waiting List
Jacob Leshno, Columbia University,
Public housing apartments become available stochastically over time, and get
assigned to applicants in an overloaded waiting list. Applicants choose apartments
based on their preferences and the expected wait estimates for the different
apartments open to them. We combine theoretical work looking at waiting list
allocation mechanism and data from the assignment from new york city to
investigate efficiency of current and suggested policies.
4 - Should Hospitals Keep Their Patients Longer? The Role Of
Inpatient Care In Reducing Post-discharge Mortality
Carri Chan, Columbia Business School, ,
Ann Bartel, Song-Hee Kim
CMS endorsed 30-day mortality rates as important indicators of hospital quality,
despite concerns that post-discharge mortality rates consider the frequency of an
event that occurs after a patient is discharged and no longer under the watch and
care of the hospital. Using a dataset of all Medicare hospital encounters from 2000
to 2011 and an instrumental variables methodology to address the potential
endogeneity bias in hospital length-of-stay, we find evidence that 30-day
mortality rates are appropriate measures of hospital quality. For patients with
diagnoses of Pneumonia or Acute Myocardial Infarction, an additional day in the
hospital could decrease 30-day mortality rates by up to 12.8%.
TC36
205B-MCC
Innovative Pricing
Sponsored: Manufacturing & Service Oper Mgmt, Supply Chain
Sponsored Session
Chair: Yao Cui, Cornell University, 401N Sage Hall, Ithaca, NY, 14853,
United States,
1 - Price Competition In The Presence Of Social Comparison And
Demand Uncertainty
Yun Zhou, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada,
, Ming Hu, Tony H Cui
We consider the price competition between a duopoly selling differentiated
substitutable products under additive demand uncertainty, in which firms’
decisions are influenced by social comparison. Social comparison theory, as well
as conventional wisdom, suggests that social comparison behaviors, such as
behind aversion (upward comparison) and ahead seeking (downward
comparison), all work in the similar fashion to intensify competition. We
demonstrate how opposite-directional social comparisons interact with demand
variability to change competitive behaviors.
2 - The Operational Advantages Of Threshold Discounting Offers
Simone Marinesi, WHARTON,
Karan Girotra, Serguei Netessine
We study the use of threshold discounting, the practice of offering a discounted
service only if a pre-determined number of customers subscribe to the service, as
pioneered by Groupon. We show novel operational advantages of these offers,
including making strategic customers beneficial to the firm.
3 - Dynamic Pricing Under Debt: Spiraling Distortions And
Efficiency Losses
Dan Andrei Iancu, Stanford University, 655 Knight Way, Stanford,
CA, 94305, United States, , Omar Besbes,
Nikolaos Trichakis
We analyze the distortions induced by the presence of debt on a seller’s dynamic
pricing policy, as well as the efficiency losses that such distortions generate. We
show that sellers under debt always price higher and discount items at a lower
pace than optimal, and that these distortions compounds over time, leading to a
form of spiraling down in efficiency.
4 - Price Dispersion And Consumer Upgrades: Theory And Empirical
Evidence From Airline Industry
Yao Cui, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States,
, A. Yesim Orhun, Izak Duenyas
We study how the offering of premium seating upgrades affects the airline’s ticket
price dispersion. We provide insights into this effect both analytically and
empirically.
TC37
205C-MCC
Sustainable Operations II
Sponsored: Manufacturing & Service Oper Mgmt, Sustainable
Operations
Sponsored Session
Chair: Natalie Huang, Scheller College of Business - Georgia Institute of
Technology, GA, United States,
1 - Carrot Or Stick? An Analysis Of Environmental Policies In
Supply Chains
Xuan Zhao, Associate Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University,
75 University Ave. W., Waterloo, ON, N2L3C5, Canada,
, Junsong Bian
We examine two types of environmental policies: pollution abatement subsidy
(“Carrot” policy) and pollution emission tax (“Stick” policy), in a supply chain
where the manufacturer invests in a pollution abatement technology. We find the
“Carrot” policy furnishes a higher incentive to the manufacturer’s pollution
abatement, does not intensify double marginalization, and yields higher profits for
both the manufacturer and the retailer. However, when the pollution abatement
is very costly and the production emission is highly damaging, the government
prefers to implement the “Stick” policy as the “Carrot” policy leads to lower social
welfare and environmental performance.
2 - Strategies To Combat Refurbished And Remanufactured
Counterfeit Products
Morteza Pourakbar, Erasmus University, Vignolahof 14,
Rotterdam, 3066 AV, Netherlands, Paolo
Letizia, Mohammad Nikoofal
End-of-life and end-of-use products are considered as one of the main sources of
core acquisitions for counterfeiters. In this paper, we study what and how anti-
counterfeiting strategies could be used to deter counterfeiters from producing
refurbished and re-manufactured counterfeit products.
3 - The Value Of Competition In Remanufacturing
Narendra Singh, Indian School of Business, Sector 81, Mohali,
140306, India, , Karthik Ramachandran,
Ravi Subramanian
We study an OEM’s product strategy when the OEM offers a new product that
depreciates over time and consumers are strategic. The OEM competes with a
third-party remanufacturer for acquisition and remanufacturing of the
depreciated products. We study how competition from the third-party
remanufacturer affects the OEM.
TC35