IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v64y2018i5p2380-2389.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Self-Regulation of an Unobservable Queue

Author

Listed:
  • Moshe Haviv

    (Department of Statistics and Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 91905 Jerusalem, Israel)

  • Binyamin Oz

    (Department of Statistics, University of Auckland, Auckland 1042, New Zealand)

Abstract

We consider an unobservable M / M /1 queue where customers are homogeneous with respect to service valuation and cost per unit time of waiting. It is well known that left to themselves, in equilibrium, customers join the queue at a rate higher than is socially optimal. Hence, regulation schemes, under which the resulting equilibrium joining rate coincides with the socially optimal one, should be considered. We suggest a classification of regulation schemes based on a few desired properties and use it to classify schemes from the existing literature. To the best of our knowledge, none of the existing schemes possesses all of the properties, and in this paper we suggest such a scheme. Its novelty is in assigning random priorities to customers, prior to their decision whether to join or balk. We also introduce variations of this regulation scheme as well as others that are also based on randomization. The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2728 . This paper was accepted by Gad Allon, operations management.

Suggested Citation

  • Moshe Haviv & Binyamin Oz, 2018. "Self-Regulation of an Unobservable Queue," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(5), pages 2380-2389, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:64:y:2018:i:5:p:2380-2389
    DOI: mnsc.2017.2728
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/mnsc.2017.2728
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/mnsc.2017.2728?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wayne A. Leeman, 1964. "Letter to the Editor—The Reduction of Queues Through the Use of Price," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 12(5), pages 783-785, October.
    2. Luyi Yang & Laurens Debo & Varun Gupta, 2017. "Trading Time in a Congested Environment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(7), pages 2377-2395, July.
    3. Edelson, Noel M & Hildebrand, David K, 1975. "Congestion Tolls for Poisson Queuing Processes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 43(1), pages 81-92, January.
    4. Naor, P, 1969. "The Regulation of Queue Size by Levying Tolls," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 37(1), pages 15-24, January.
    5. Moshe Haviv & Ya'acov Ritov, 1998. "Externalities, Tangible Externalities, and Queue Disciplines," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(6), pages 850-858, June.
    6. Rafael Hassin, 1995. "Decentralized Regulation of a Queue," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(1), pages 163-173, January.
    7. Gad Allon & Eran Hanany, 2012. "Cutting in Line: Social Norms in Queues," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(3), pages 493-506, March.
    8. Hassin, Refael, 1985. "On the Optimality of First Come Last Served Queues," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(1), pages 201-202, January.
    9. Hanna Alperstein, 1988. "Note---Optimal Pricing Policy for the Service Facility Offering a Set of Priority Prices," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 34(5), pages 666-671, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Moshe Haviv & Binyamin Oz, 2021. "A busy period approach to some queueing games," Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 97(3), pages 261-277, April.
    2. Antonis Economou, 2022. "How much information should be given to the strategic customers of a queueing system?," Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 100(3), pages 421-423, April.
    3. Gabi Hanukov & Michael Hassoun & Oren Musicant, 2021. "On the Benefits of Providing Timely Information in Ticket Queues with Balking and Calling Times," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 9(21), pages 1-16, October.
    4. Antonis Economou & Vidyadhar Kulkarni, 2020. "Editorial introduction to the special issue on ‘Strategic queueing: game-theoretic models in queueing theory’—part 1," Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 96(3), pages 201-203, December.
    5. Li, Zhong-Ping & Chang, Aichih (Jasmine) & Zou, Zongbao, 2023. "Design mechanism to coordinate a hierarchical healthcare system: Patient subsidy vs. capacity investment," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    6. Chamberlain, Jonathan & Simhon, Eran & Starobinski, David, 2021. "Preemptible queues with advance reservations: Strategic behavior and revenue management," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 293(2), pages 561-578.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Moshe Haviv & Binyamin Oz, 2015. "Regulating an observable M/M/1 queue," Discussion Paper Series dp691, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    2. Refael Hassin, 2022. "Profit maximization and cost balancing in queueing systems," Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 100(3), pages 429-431, April.
    3. Hassin, Refael & Haviv, Moshe & Oz, Binyamin, 2023. "Strategic behavior in queues with arrival rate uncertainty," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 309(1), pages 217-224.
    4. Moshe Haviv & Binyamin Oz, 2014. "Self-regulation of a queue via random priorities," Discussion Paper Series dp674, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    5. Shiliang Cui & Zhongbin Wang & Luyi Yang, 2020. "The Economics of Line-Sitting," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(1), pages 227-242, January.
    6. Royi Jacobovic, 2022. "Regulation of a single-server queue with customers who dynamically choose their service durations," Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 101(3), pages 245-290, August.
    7. Bradford, Richard M., 1996. "Pricing, routing, and incentive compatibility in multiserver queues," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 89(2), pages 226-236, March.
    8. Chamberlain, Jonathan & Simhon, Eran & Starobinski, David, 2021. "Preemptible queues with advance reservations: Strategic behavior and revenue management," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 293(2), pages 561-578.
    9. Manlu Chen & Ming Hu & Jianfu Wang, 2022. "Food Delivery Service and Restaurant: Friend or Foe?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(9), pages 6539-6551, September.
    10. Zhao, Chen & Wang, Zhongbin, 2023. "The impact of line-sitting on a two-server queueing system," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 308(2), pages 782-800.
    11. William P. Barnett & Daniel A. Levinthal, 2017. "Special Issue Introduction: Evolutionary Logics of Strategy and Organization," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 2(1), pages 1-1, March.
    12. Wang, Jinting & Zhang, Feng, 2013. "Strategic joining in M/M/1 retrial queues," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 230(1), pages 76-87.
    13. Zhongbin Wang & Luyi Yang & Shiliang Cui & Jinting Wang, 2021. "In-queue priority purchase: a dynamic game approach," Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 97(3), pages 343-381, April.
    14. Luyi Yang & Zhongbin Wang & Shiliang Cui, 2021. "A Model of Queue Scalping," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(11), pages 6803-6821, November.
    15. Nur Sunar & Yichen Tu & Serhan Ziya, 2021. "Pooled vs. Dedicated Queues when Customers Are Delay-Sensitive," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 3785-3802, June.
    16. Ying Chen & John J. Hasenbein, 2020. "Knowledge, congestion, and economics: Parameter uncertainty in Naor’s model," Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 96(1), pages 83-99, October.
    17. Yasushi Masuda & Akira Tsuji, 2019. "Congestion Control for a System with Parallel Stations and Homogeneous Customers Using Priority Passes," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 293-318, March.
    18. Luyi Yang & Shiliang Cui & Zhongbin Wang, 2022. "Design of Covid‐19 testing queues," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(5), pages 2204-2221, May.
    19. Hung Q. Nguyen & Tuan Phung-Duc, 2022. "Strategic customer behavior and optimal policies in a passenger–taxi double-ended queueing system with multiple access points and nonzero matching times," Queueing Systems: Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 102(3), pages 481-508, December.
    20. Refael Hassin & Ran I. Snitkovsky, 2020. "Social and Monopoly Optimization in Observable Queues," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 68(4), pages 1178-1198, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:64:y:2018:i:5:p:2380-2389. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.