Aggregate Utility Research Articles

Optimal markdown policy of perishable food under the consumer price fairness perception

Markdown policies are widely used by retailers to sell perishable food. Consumers purchase food at different prices during different sales periods. Some consumers may compare their experience with others who purchase the same items. Price unfairness or inequity is perceived when different prices are quoted without reasonable explanations. This study develops an optimal markdown model for perishable food pricing to optimise the food retailer revenue and enable a maximum aggregated consumer utility considering individuals’ price fairness perception. The model serves as the first step in evaluating trade-offs between food retailer revenue and consumer utility. In addition, it enables consumer utility to be depicted through perceived price fairness by including the effects of food perishability and scarcity. Another innovative feature is the equalisation of the consumer average aggregated utility during different sales periods as a condition of intertemporal price fairness perception. The proposed model is compared with two benchmark models to justify the effectiveness and advantages in the example. Finally, a sensitive analysis based on the food deterioration rate, consumer food desire rate and consumer average reservation price is conducted to justify the manner in which these factors influence the optimal pricing policy, and managerial insights are suggested for food retailers.

PHP72 - DOWNSTREAM MEDICAL COST OFFSETS IN MEDICARE FROM PRESCRIPTION DRUG USE IN EMPLOYER-SPONSORED INSURANCE

To estimate the impact of prescription drug utilization during pre-Medicare coverage years under employer-sponsored insurance on later medical spending in Medicare. Individuals found in both the Commercial and Medicare Supplemental Marketscan® files were selected. Study subjects were required to be 64 years old or younger at baseline and continuously eligible throughout the entire 5-year study period 2008-2012. The resulting panel dataset was comprised of 133,412 individuals who aged into Medicare, each with 5 annual observations. Conducted was an econometric analysis of the impact of aggregate prescription drug utilization on total, inpatient, and outpatient medical costs. Individual fixed effects Poisson models of these cost measures were estimated as a function of 1-, 2-, and 3-year lagged values of prescription drug utilization—measured as the number of days’ supply-adjusted fills. All models also included a robust set of controls. Among individuals covered by Medicare (ages 65-68), a 1 percent increase in prescription drug utilization 1 year prior was associated with a 0.363 percent decrease in total medical costs. Notably, medication use 2 years prior prompted a 0.123 percent decrease in total medical costs, and these offsets still persisted after 3 years (0.059 percent decrease). Effects were more pronounced for inpatient relative to outpatient costs. The pattern of declining, yet persistent, medical cost offsets for at least 3 years emerged for all three measures of medical costs. Pharmaceutical use is expected to lower spending on other medical services. The duration of these offsets may span multiple payers. Retirees entering Medicare who are healthier due to prior medication use are less costly. Indeed, the Medicare program is exposed to the consequences of prescription drug use 3 years prior to coverage. The evaluation of policies that could alter medication use among the near retired (such as the “Cadillac Tax”) should consider this important finding.

Optimal Energy Management for a Smart Grid using Resource-Aware Utility Maximization

Abstract Heterogeneous energy prosumers are aggregated to form a smart grid based energy community managed by a central controller which could maximize their collective energy resource utilization. Using the central controller and distributed energy management systems, various mechanisms that harness the power profile of the energy community are developed for optimal, multi-objective energy management. The proposed mechanisms include resource-aware, multi-variable energy utility maximization objectives, namely: (1) maximizing the net green energy utilization, (2) maximizing the prosumers’ level of comfortable, high quality power usage, and (3) maximizing the economic dispatch of energy storage units that minimize the net energy cost of the energy community. Moreover, an optimal energy management solution that combines the three objectives has been implemented by developing novel techniques of optimally flexible (un)certainty projection and appliance based pricing decomposition in an IBM ILOG CPLEX studio. A real-world, per-minute data from an energy community consisting of forty prosumers in Amsterdam, Netherlands is used. Results show that each of the proposed mechanisms yields significant increases in the aggregate energy resource utilization and welfare of prosumers as compared to traditional peak-power reduction methods. Furthermore, the multi-objective, resource-aware utility maximization approach leads to an optimal energy equilibrium and provides a sustainable energy management solution as verified by the Lagrangian method. The proposed resource-aware mechanisms could directly benefit emerging energy communities in the world to attain their energy resource utilization targets.

How Social Innovation ‘Came to Be’: Tracing the Evolution of a Contested Concept

AbstractSocial innovation is a contested concept with multiple meanings that have implications beyond academia. It is not a new term – its sociological heritage can be dated to the late nineteenth century. However, until the twenty-first century the concept was sparsely utilised, and, despite its current popularity among policy makers in Europe and the United States, remains largely ignored by social policy researchers. Through bibliometric analysis we identify the most influential articles on social innovation and explore how these have conceptualised the term. We show that over time social innovation has taken on a set of meanings far removed from its sociological roots. In particular we identify a weak tradition that sees social innovation as any increase in aggregate individual utility arising from an innovation, and a strong tradition that focuses on the process of collaboration between different groups and the restructuring of power relations. We conclude by outlining implications for social policy research.

Cross-Layer Opportunistic Scheduling for Device-to-Device Video Multicast Services

In this article, we address the problem of how to make the wireless device-to-device (D2D) video multicast systems have better quality provision with consideration of internet-of-things (IoT) applications. We propose an opportunistic transmission and fair resource allocation framework, including joint application-layer and physical-layer transmission and optimization. First, we use a parallel subchannels structure by concatenating the Fountain codes and diversity-embedded space-time block codes to provide reliable and flexible transmission in heterogeneous circumstances. Second, we exploit the quality of heterogeneous user experience (quality of experience) metric under D2D video multicast systems, with consideration of various channel states, device capability, video content urgency, and the number of demanding users. Third, we formulate reliable multiple video streams broadcasting to heterogeneous devices as an aggregate maximum utility achieving problem, and we use opportunistic scheduling to select suitable users in each transmission interval to improve the broadcasting utility. Fourth, we use the utility fair scheme to guide rate allocation among multicontent video multicast. Extensive performance comparison and analysis are presented to demonstrate efficiency of the proposed solution.

Comparative evaluation of dense-graded and gap-graded asphalt mix incorporating electric arc furnace steel slag and copper mine tailings

The use of non-conventional aggregate materials in road works is still at an experimental stage in Malaysia. The persistent utilization of conventional aggregates in the construction of roads and highways is a potential hazard to the environment. Effective extenuation actions and invaluable research on alternative aggregate materials could alleviate the problem. In this study, an investigation on the suitability of electric arc furnace (EAF) steel slag and copper mine tailings (CMT) as alternative asphalt paving materials is proposed. Laboratory tests to evaluate the performance of mixtures incorporating EAF steel slag and CMT were conducted. Four material mixtures of sixteen mix designs, eight ACW 14 designed and eight SMA 14 designed were evaluated. Mix 1 was 100% granite, Mix 2 consisted of 80% granite and 20% CMT, Mix 3 consisted of 80% EAF steel slag and 20% CMT while Mix 4 consisted of 40% EAF steel slag, 40% granite and 20% CMT. The test results indicated that mixes containing EAF steel slag and CMT performed better in rutting and are less susceptible to permanent deformation compared to control mix. Hence, it is envisioned that EAF steel slag and CMT are promising alternative aggregate to be used as asphalt paving material.

Auctioning Time

We consider the problem of auctioning time - a one-dimensional continuously-divisible heterogeneous good - among multiple agents. Applications include auctioning time for using a shared device, auctioning TV commercial slots, and more. Different agents may have different valuations for the different possible intervals; the goal is to maximize the aggregate utility. Agents are self-interested and may misrepresent their true valuation functions if this benefits them. Thus, we seek auctions that are truthful . Considering the case that each agent may obtain a single interval, the challenge is twofold, as we need to determine both where to slice the interval, and who gets what slice. We consider two settings: discrete and continuous. In the discrete setting, we are given a sequence of m indivisible elements ( e 1 , …, e m ), and the auction must allocate each agent a consecutive subsequence of the elements. In the continuous setting, we are given a continuous, infinitely divisible interval, and the auction must allocate each agent a subinterval. The agents’ valuations are nonatomic measures on the interval. We show that, for both settings, the associated computational problem is NP-complete even under very restrictive assumptions. Hence, we provide approximation algorithms. For the discrete case, we provide a truthful auctioning mechanism that approximates the optimal welfare to within a log m factor. The mechanism works for arbitrary monotone valuations. For the continuous setting, we provide a truthful auctioning mechanism that approximates the optimal welfare to within an O (log n ) factor (where n is the number of agents). Additionally, we provide a truthful 2-approximation mechanism for the case that all pieces must be of some fixed size.

Distributed Association and Relaying With Fairness in Millimeter Wave Networks

Millimeter wave (mmWave) systems are emerging as an essential technology for enabling extremely high data rate wireless communications. The main limiting factors of mmWave systems are blockage (high penetration loss) and deafness (misalignment between the beams of the transmitter and receiver). To alleviate these problems, it is imperative to incorporate efficient association and relaying between terminals and access points. Unfortunately, the existing association techniques are designed for the traditional interference-limited networks, and thus are highly suboptimal for mmWave communications due to narrow-beam operations and the resulting non-negligible interference-free behavior. This paper introduces a distributed approach that solves the joint association and relaying problem in mmWave networks considering the load balancing at access points. The problem is posed as a novel stochastic optimization problem, which is solved by distributed auction algorithms where the clients and relays act asynchronously to achieve optimal client-relay-access point association. It is shown that the algorithms provably converge to a solution that maximizes the aggregate logarithmic utility within a desired bound. Numerical results allow quantification of the performance enhancements introduced by the relays, and the substantial improvements of the network throughput and fairness among the clients by the proposed association method as compared to standard approaches. It is concluded that mmWave communications with proper association and relaying mechanisms can support extremely high data rates, connection reliability, and fairness among the clients.

A Game-Theoretical Approach for Spectrum Efficiency Improvement in Cloud-RAN

As tremendous mobile devices access to the Internet in the future, the cells which can provide high data rate and more capacity are expected to be deployed. Specifically, in the next generation of mobile communication 5G, cloud computing is supposed to be applied to radio access network. In cloud radio access network (Cloud-RAN), the traditional base station is divided into two parts, that is, remote radio heads (RRHs) and base band units (BBUs). RRHs are geographically distributed and densely deployed, so as to achieve high data rate and low latency. However, the ultradense deployment inevitably deteriorates spectrum efficiency due to the severer intercell interference among RRHs. In this paper, the downlink spectrum efficiency can be improved through the cooperative transmission based on forming the coalitions of RRHs. We formulate the problem as a coalition formation game in partition form. In the process of coalition formation, each RRH can join or leave one coalition to maximize its own individual utility while taking into account the coalition utility at the same time. Moreover, the convergence and stability of the resulting coalition structure are studied. The numeric simulation result demonstrates that the proposed approach based on coalition formation game is superior to the noncooperative method in terms of the aggregate coalition utility.

Balancing Income and User Utility in Spectrum Allocation

To match wireless users’ soaring traffic demand, spectrum regulators are considering allocating additional spectrum to the wireless market. There are two major directions for the spectrum allocation: licensed (e.g., 4G cellular service) and unlicensed services (e.g., Super Wi-Fi service). The 4G service provides a ubiquitous coverage, has a higher spectrum efficiency, and often charges users a high service price. The Super Wi-Fi service has a limited coverage, a lower spectrum efficiency, but often charges users a low service price. The spectrum regulator now simply allocates the spectrum to maximize its income, but such an income-centric allocation does not ensure the best spectrum utilization by the users. This motivates us to design a new spectrum allocation scheme which jointly considers the spectrum regulator’s income and the users’ aggregate utility by investigating three market tiers: the spectrum regulator, 4G and Super Wi-Fi operator coalitions, and all the wireless users. We formulate it as a three-stage game and derive the unique subgame perfect equilibrium. Compared with the traditional income-centric allocation, we prove that the proposed scheme significantly improves users’ aggregate utility with a limited spectrum regulator’s income loss.

The Case for Equality: On Frankfurt's On Inequality

Economic equality has long been regarded as morally important. Arguments for greater economic equality remain central to American political discourse. Now in a short highly readable book entitled "On Inequality," Harry G. Frankfurt, professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University, offers a brief meditation on what it means to value equality, and whether we should.Frankfurt advances two overarching claims: a normative claim that individuals should not favor economic equality, and a positive claim that equality is not an ideal of any intrinsic moral importance. Both of Frankfurt’s claims are worthy of serious consideration but both are flawed.On the normative side, Frankfurt seeks to establish that economic equality is not a value worth pursuing and that most people who favor economic equality should (or do in fact) favor sufficiency — that is, that society ensure that every person has enough material resources to lead a happy life. On the positive side, Frankfurt contends that equality has no underived moral worth, and that those who purport to favor equality do not in fact favor equality itself, but rather favor a society that ensures that individuals are treated with respect they deserve. This review sets out Frankfurt's arguments and points out some of their flaws. It then offers three reasons that we might regard economic equality as morally valuable in its own right. First, we might favor it if, as an empirical matter, it maximizes aggregate utility. Second, we might favor it if it is the most moral means of achieving other ends that we value. Third, we might favor it because we think no one should be able to have a certain level of material wealth unless everyone can have it. Frankfurt’s book is provocative but its conclusions miss the mark. Equality can be morally important even in circumstances in which everyone has enough or only some can.

Hexaphenylbenzene-Stabilized Luminescent Silver Nanoclusters: A Potential Catalytic System for the Cycloaddition of Terminal Alkynes with Isocyanides.

A hexaphenylbenzene (HPB)-based derivative bearing thiol groups has been designed and synthesized that undergoes aggregation-induced emission enhancement in mixed aqueous media to form rodlike fluorescent aggregates. These rodlike aggregates behave as a "not quenched" probe for the detection of silver ions and further act as reactors and stabilizers for reducing-agent-free preparation of blue luminescent silver nanoclusters at room temperature. The utilization of fluorescent supramolecular aggregates for the preparation of Ag NCs in mixed aqueous media is unprecedented in the literature. Moreover, the wet chemical method that we are reporting in the present paper for the preparation of luminescent silver nanoclusters is better than the other methods reported in the literature. Further, these in situ generated Ag NCs showed exceptional catalytic activity in the preparation of pyrroles involving cocyclization of isocyanides and terminal alkynes. Interestingly, the catalytic efficiency of in situ generated Ag NCs was found to be better than the other catalytic systems reported in the literature.

Distributed multi-objective cross-layer optimization with joint hyperlink and transmission mode scheduling in network coding-based wireless networks

In this work, we address a cross-layer multi-objective optimization problem of maximizing network lifetime and optimizing aggregate system utility with intra-flow network coding, solved in a distributed manner. Based on the network utility maximization (NUM) framework, we resolve this problem to accommodate routing, scheduling, and stream control from different layers in the coded networks. Specially, we consider that there are two scheduling primitives, namely hyperlink and transmission mode, to be concurrently activated for the multi-objective optimization. Given the constraints with respect to these primitives, the optimization problem is specifically formulated as a quadratically constrained quadratic programming (QCQP) problem that is NP-hard in general, and its scheduling subproblem even when reduced to account for only one of these primitives is a maximum weighted independent set (MWIS) problem that is NP-hard already. To alleviate this complex problem in a distributed manner, we resort to alternate convex search (ACS) and primal decomposition (PD) to approximate the optimal results by using biconvex programming model and subgradient-based algorithm that can iteratively approach to the optimal solution. For the wireless multihop networks, wherein an optimal solution could be practically approximated as its validity would be out-of-date soon in the error-prone wireless environment, our simulation results show that the distributed method can fulfill our requirements, and can make a good trade-off on the heterogeneous objectives with well computational efficiency.

Individuals' social preferences in joint activity location choice: A negotiation model and empirical evidence

Out-of-home leisure activities are often conducted jointly by individuals implying that location and travel choices made for these activities are the result of a group interaction. Current utility-theoretic approaches assume an aggregated group utility function and hence ignore aspects of the group decision making process. In this study, an empirical model of joint-activity choice is developed that, in contrast, assumes a negotiation process. A social utility function describes how individuals deal with preference differences in the group. The model is estimated based on an experimental activity-travel choice task where group settings are mimicked. A sample (N=315) from a national panel of individuals participated in the experiment. Estimation results based on a discrete mixture model show that individuals display a preference for locations in which losses are equally distributed in the group even when this comes at the costs of the total group outcome. Results further show that the social utility function is asymmetric: compromise solutions are favored more strongly when consequences relate to costs (travel costs) than when they concern rewards (attractiveness). Furthermore, there is considerable heterogeneity in how people make social trade-offs. It is concluded that the model offers new insights in location preferences for joint activities that should be taken into account in spatial choice models and accessibility analysis.

A Utility Copula Approach for Preference Functions in Engineering Design

Utility copula functions (Abbas, 2009, “Multiattribute Utility Copulas,” Oper. Res., 57(6), pp. 1367–1383) construct multi-attribute utility surfaces by combining individual von-Neumann Morgenstern utility assessments for each of the attributes of a decision. Two important properties of utility copula functions guarantee consistency of the individual utility assessments with the aggregate multi-attribute utility surface: (i) the individual utility assessment for each attribute must be conducted at a specified reference value of the remaining (complement) attributes and (ii) the utility copula function must be a linear function of each attribute at some specified reference value. Preference functions (also known as aggregation functions) in engineering design construct preference surfaces to determine tradeoffs among design attributes by combining univariate utility assessments for each attribute, but they do not specify any reference value of the complement attributes for which the assessments should be made. Moreover, the preference function is not required to be a linear function of each attribute at any reference value of the complement. Consequently, the procedure used to construct some of the widely used preference functions in engineering design can result in preference surfaces that are inconsistent with the assessments used for its construction. We derive a unique form of preference functions, which allows for consistent assessments. We show that the resulting preference function is a special case of a utility copula function. With this interpretation, we also provide meaningful interpretations for the weights in preference functions to enable their appropriate assessment.

Utility-Based Optimized Cross-Layer Scheme for Real-Time Video Transmission Over HSDPA

In this paper we first build an accurate and general transmission distortion model for H.264/AVC video streams to estimate the importance of each packet. Then, a utility-based optimized cross-layer resource allocation, MCS selection, and packet scheduling algorithm for real-time video transmission over HSDPA is studied. The utility here refers to the packet utility which is defined as a function of the packet urgency and the packet importance . Transmitting the packets with greater utility values firstly in each TTI can provide a higher level of video quality for the users. Thus, we formulate an optimization problem with the objective of maximizing the aggregate packet utility over all the users under the HSDPA physical resource constraints . In order to obtain an optimal transmission strategy, a dynamic programming -based cross-layer algorithm (DPCLA) is proposed. In view of its high complexity, we further develop a greedy-based cross-layer algorithm (GCLA) to find a suboptimal solution. Simulation results show that the proposed utility-based optimized cross-layer scheme, including the proposed transmission distortion model and the algorithms of DPCLA and GCLA, can provide higher received video quality than the existing ones for video transmission over HSDPA.

Utilization of Fly Ash Aggregates in Pervious Concrete

Utilization of Fly Ash Aggregates in Pervious Concrete

The problem of land value betterment: a simplified agent-based test

In this paper, we employ behaviour-driven cellular automata as a simplified agent-based modelling approach to test the seminal Coase theorem, with a policy focus on the land value betterment effect of urban infrastructure provision. Four prototypical development regimes are identified from international practice: (1) the private developer-oriented Metroland model dating back to the suburbanisation of London in the nineteenth century England; (2) the private household-led special district model, which can be observed in many contemporary US suburbs; (3) the public planning-regulated model, as featured in most post-war European welfare state countries, including the present-day UK; (4) the public state-as-developer model, which characterises what has been taking place in China. A repeated analysis of variance (ANOVA) based on the results of a large number of cellular automata simulations suggests no significant difference between models I and II in terms of their welfare outcomes measured by aggregate utility. However, models III and IV are both found to generate significantly less welfare than models I and II, under strict assumptions of zero transaction costs, perfect information, perfect capital markets and perfect competition.

Erratum to: A bitter choice turned sweet: How acknowledging individuals’ concern at having a low relative income serves to align utilitarianism and egalitarianism

When individuals’ utility is a convex combination of their income and their concern at having a low relative income (the weights attached to income and to the concern at having a low relative income sum up to one), the maximization of aggregate utility yields an equal income distribution. This alignment of utilitarianism and egalitarianism is obtained for any number of individuals, and for general utility functions that are convex combinations of a power function of income and the concern at having a low relative income. The alignment can also hold when the weights sum up to a number different than one.

Natural aggregate totally replacement by mechanically treated concrete waste

Abstract This paper presents the results obtained from the research focused on the utilization of crushed concrete waste aggregates as a partial or full replacement of 4/8 and 8/16 mm natural aggregates fraction in concrete strength class C 16/20. Main concrete characteristics such as workability, density and compressive strength were studied. Compressive strength testing intervals for samples with recycled concrete aggregates were 2, 7, 14 and 28 days. The amount of water in the mixtures was indicative. For mixture resulting consistency required slump grade S3 was followed. Average density of all samples is in the range of 2250 kg/m3 to 2350 kg/m3. The highest compressive strength after 28 days of curing, 34.68 MPa, reached sample, which contained 100% of recycled material in 4/8 mm fraction and 60% of recycled aggregates in 8/16 mm fraction. This achieved value was only slightly different from the compressive strength 34.41 MPa of the reference sample.