arXiv subjects

Antonis Economou

Publications and source records attributed to Antonis Economou.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Revenue and Social Welfare Maximization in Service Systems: Independent vs Grouped Customers

The revenue maximization problem in service systems with strategic customers is a central problem in the thread of Rational Queueing literature. The standard modeling assumption is that customers act independently and, therefore, the situation is modeled as a game among the customers and the service provider. In the present work, we focus on the case where the customers are grouped and controlled by their leader and the situation becomes a game between the customers' leader and the service provider. We examine the effect of customers' cooperation for the join-or-balk dilemma at the unobservable single-server Markovian queue and present the impact on the social welfare and service provider's revenue.

math.OC↗

arXiv2019

Strategic customer behavior in a queueing system with alternating information structure

Strategic customer behavior is strongly influenced by the level of information that is provided to customers. Hence, to optimize the design of queueing systems, many studies consider various versions of the same service model and compare them under different information structures. In particular, two extreme versions are usually considered and compared: the observable in which customers are informed about the number of customers in the system and the unobservable in which they are only informed about the system parameters, e.g., arrival and service rates. In the present work, we study a model that bridges these two versions. More concretely, we assume that the system alternates between observable and unobservable periods. We characterize and compute customer equilibrium joining/balking strategies and show that the present model unifies and extends existing approaches of both heterogeneously observable models and models with delayed observations. More importantly, our findings indicate that an alternating information structure implies in general higher equilibrium throughput and social welfare in comparison to both the observable and unobservable cases. We complement our results with numerical experiments and provide managerial insight on the optimal control of the system parameters.

math.OC↗

arXiv2011

Equilibrium balking strategies for a clearing queueing system in alternating environment

We consider a Markovian clearing queueing system, where the customers are accumulated according to a Poisson arrival process and the server removes all present customers at the completion epochs of exponential service cycles. This system may represent the visits of a transportation facility with unlimited capacity at a certain station. The system evolves in an alternating environment that influences the arrival and the service rates. We assume that the arriving customers decide whether to join the system or balk, based on a natural linear reward-cost structure. We study the balking behavior of the customers and derive the corresponding Nash equilibrium strategies under various levels of information.

math.OC↗

arXiv2011

Equilibrium balking strategies in the single server Markovian queue with catastrophes

We consider a Markovian queue subject to Poisson generated catastrophes. Whenever a catastrophe occurs, all customers are forced to abandon the system, the server is rendered inoperative and an exponential repair time is set on. We assume that the arriving customers decide whether to join the system or balk, based on a natural reward-cost structure. We study the balking behavior of the customers and derive the corresponding Nash equilibrium strategies.

math.PR↗