Sharif Digital Repository

In late 2018, Qatar -as a key player in the global gas market-announced that it has decided to quit the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and rather will be focussing on its gas industry. Such a decision, drew the attentions once again and after a decade to the issue of gas cartel formation. The basic question of this paper is under which conditions gas cartel formation is feasible in presence of an oil cartel. Using a game theory framework the paper models the interaction of countries that export both gas and oil and are member of OPEC with those that export only gas or oil. Results indicate that gas cartel formation is feasible but under very vulnerable conditions.... 

In late 2018, Qatar -as a key player in the global gas market-announced that it has decided to quit the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and rather will be focussing on its gas industry. Such a decision, drew the attentions once again and after a decade to the issue of gas cartel formation. The basic question of this paper is under which conditions gas cartel formation is feasible in presence of an oil cartel. Using a game theory framework the paper models the interaction of countries that export both gas and oil and are member of OPEC with those that export only gas or oil. Results indicate that gas cartel formation is feasible but under very vulnerable conditions.... 

Functional relationship between supplier and buyer in an open market place leads to investigate the role of both quantifiable and non-quantifiable parameters in coordination mechanism with the aim of achieving higher performance in supply chain activities. Here, we develop a supply chain model and a new agent to analyze and simulate the players' behavior in the network. A cooperative game theory framework is utilized between buyer and supplier in order to increase the supply chain performance. The study is supported by presenting SC Net Optimizer as a tool for implementing the proposed coordination mechanism and evaluates the performance of the chain by simulation using stochastic Petri nets... 

This paper studying the impact of strategic customer behavior on decentralized supply chain gains and decisions, which includes a supplier, and a monopoly firm as a retailer who sells a single product over a finite two periods of selling season. We consider three types of customers: myopic, strategic and low-value customers. The problem is formulated as a bi-level game where at the second level (e.g. horizontal game), the retailer determines his/her equilibrium pricing strategy in a non-cooperative simultaneous general game with strategic customers who choose equilibrium purchasing strategy to maximize their expected surplus. At the first level (e.g. vertical game), the supplier competes... 

Sanctions imposed by a country against another country are considered as a foreign policy tool. Many studies have investigated different aspects of sanctions including the efficacy of sanctions to alter the target country’s behaviour. However, the effects of a potential fight-back strategy adopted by a target country have been discussed rarely. In this paper, the outcomes of a possible fight-back strategy are simulated using game theoretical analysis. To find the matching state of game theory and sanction regimes, we have conducted a critical and systematic review of 12 sanctions, from 1950 to 2012. The results show that the capability of a target country to implement fight-back strategies... 

Network marketing is a business model that depends upon a network of distributors for growth, such as in multilevel marketing. A direct selling method features independent agents that make up a distribution network for goods and services. This paper provides a framework to study the network marketing by adopting the traditional channel. To motivate all distributers in network marketing as well as retailers, it is required to design a well-balanced distribution and pricing system. The allocated commission for distributers in different layers of network marketing is part of pricing system, which is vital. In this paper, we develop an approach to determine all elements of system, including... 

We consider a setting in which a rail infrastructure provider divides the track costs proportionally between the above-rail operators based on their usage. We study a proposed access charge regime aimed at incentivizing the operators to use longer train configurations. The regime sets a target length and gives a discount on an operator’s charge if it deploys a configuration of at least the target. That is, the operators may be able to reduce their access charges by deploying a longer train configuration. We analyze the policy, and conditions under which both operators have an incentive to deploy long train configurations. © 2018, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature and EURO... 

In this paper, seller-buyer supply chain coordination with general side-payment contracts is introduced to gain the maximum possible chain profit. In our model, the logistics costs for both buyer and seller are considered and the final demand is also supposed to be a decreasing function of the retail price. Since parties aim to maximize their individual profits, the contractual parameters are set in a way that these decisions become aligned with system optimal decisions. Therefore, a side payment contract is suggested in our model to assign the chain surplus profit to the chain members such that they have no intention to leave the coalition. Then, we change the contract into a quantity... 

In the literature, substantial researches have been carried out on supply chain coordination. The majority of these studies suggest a mechanism that enforces the supply chain members to follow the strategies that produce the equilibrium of an integrated supply chain. Moreover, most of researches do not consider the competition among supply chains  

In this paper, a "Game Theory" approach for finding an optimal path in a "Wireless Sensor Network" is discussed. WSN is one of the most interesting research fields in the communication networks, and is the center of attention in recent years. In our model, a pricing and payment technique is presented to obtain an optimal path in a WSN by considering reliability, energy and traffic load. The proposed algorithm is able to find a path which improves network lifetime, load distribution and path reliability  

Network throughput and energy conservation are two conflicting important performance metrics for wireless sensor networks. Since these two objectives are in conflict with each other, it is difficult to achieve them simultaneously. In this paper, a joint duty cycle scheduling and energy aware routing approach is proposed based on evolutionary game theory which is called DREG. Making a trade-off cand network throughput, the proposed approach prolongs the network lifetime. The paper is divided into the following sections: Initially, the discussion is presented on how the sensor nodes can be scheduled to sleep or wake up in order to reduce energy consumption in idle listening. The sensor... 

In 1974 Dijkstra introduced the seminal concept of self-stabilization that turned out to be one of the main approaches to fault-tolerant computing. We show here how his three solutions can be formalized and reasoned about using the concepts of game theory. We also determine the precise number of steps needed to reach self-stabilization in his first solution. © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018