A parallel search game

We answer in negative a question of Gál and Miltersen [Proc 30th Int Coll Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP) 2003, pp. 332–344] about a combinatorial game arising in the study of time‐space trade‐offs for data structures. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 2005     

Noncooperative stochastic games under a n-stage local contraction assumption

We consider a class of noncooperative stochastic games with general state and action spaces and with a state dependent discount factor. The expected time duration between any two stages of the game is not bounded away from zero, so that the usual N-stage contraction assumption, uniform over all admissible strategies, does not hold. We propose milder sufficient regularity conditions, allowing strategies that give rise with probability one to any number of simultaneous stages. We give sufficient conditions for the existence of equilibrium and ∈-equilibrium stationary strategies in the sense of Nash. In the two-player zero-sum case, when an equilibrium strategy exists, the value of the game is the unique fixed point of a specific functional operator and can be computed by dynamic programming.     

Persuasive advertising under Bertrand competition: A differential game

We investigate a linear state differential game of advertising, under Cournot and Bertrand competition. A unique saddlepoint equilibrium exists if the marginal cost of advertising is sufficiently low. Bertrand competition entails more intense advertising than Cournot competition, since increasing market size is more important to firms when competition is tough.     

Periodical states and marching groups in a closed owari

Owari is an old African game that consists of cyclically ordered pits that are filled with pebbles. In a sowing move all the pebbles are taken out of one pit and distributed one by one in subsequent pits. Repeated sowing will give rise to recurrent states of the owari. Bouchet studied such periodical states in an idealised setup, where there are infinitely many pits. We characterise periodical states in owaris with finitely many pits. Our result implies Bouchet's result.     

A note on coalitional manipulation and centralized inventory management

In this note we deal with inventory games as defined in Meca et al. (Math. Methods Oper. Res. 57:483–491, 2003). In that context we introduce the property of immunity to coalitional manipulation, and demonstrate that the SOC-rule (Share the Ordering Cost) is the unique allocation rule for inventory games which satisfies this property. The authors acknowledge the financial support of Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, FEDER and Xunta de Galicia through projects SEJ2005-07637-C02-02 and PGIDIT06PXIC207038PN.     

Dual-Role Based Pricing in a Dynamic and Competitive Environment

The dual role of price, as a product attribute signaling quality and as a measure of sacrifice, serving as a benchmark for comparing the utility gains from superior product quality, is now well established in the marketing and economic literature. However, knowledge about their long-run impact and the influence of competition on these effects still remains very sparse. In the current paper, with reference to a dynamic and competitive framework, an analytical model is proposed to help determining optimal decision rules for price incorporating both roles. The main results are as follows: (i) The optimal pricing policy is determined as a Nash equilibrium strategy. (ii) The resulting equilibrium price is higher than an equilibrium that disregards the carryover price effects. (iii) For a symmetric competition, we provide normative rules on how firms should set prices as a function of the perceived quality; particularly, how the price should be set initially, when there is little product familiarity and the perceived quality is low, and how this price should vary as the perceived quality increases. (iv) At steady state, we find that the level of equilibrium margin, in percentage terms, decreases with the elasticity of demand with respect to the brand price, but this decrease is moderated by the elasticity of demand with respect to the brand perceived quality, the cross elasticity of demand with respect to the competitor’s perceived quality and the effect of the competitor’s current price on the firm’s perceived quality deterioration. The author thanks Konstantin Kogan for helpful discussions and comments.     

Games,Kernels, and Antitone Operations

In this note we want to point out the usefulness of antitone operations in the study of games on graphs. We demonstrate this by proving, among others, the generalizations from games to antitone operations of theorems stated by Fraenkel. This perspective makes also clear the general nature of some problems by separating what is general and what is particular.     

半马尔可夫对策

本文考虑半马尔可夫随机对策.在一定条件下,我们证明随机对策有值函数,两个局中人相对于折扣报酬都有最优策略.     

Femtosecond second-order solitons in optical fiber transmission

A propagation of the femtosecond second-order solitons in an optical fiber is studied. We show that a generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation well describes the propagation of the second-order soliton even containing only a few optical cycles. The propagations of a 50 fs and a 10 fs second-order soliton in an optical fiber are numerically simulated. It is found that, for the case of 10 fs second-order soliton, the soliton decay is dominated by the third-order dispersion, in contrast to the case of 50 fs second-order solitons, where the soliton decay is dominated by the delayed Raman response. It is also found that the exact delayed Raman response form must be used for the propagation of the 50 fs or less than 50 fs second-order soliton.