主题: Allocating Coalition Payoffs under Diminishing Marginal Contributions: An Analytic Nucleolus Solution and Its Applications in Operations Management

主讲人：冷明明教授

香港岭南大学终身教授

电脑与决策科学系教授和主管

已经连续两年成功获得香港政府研究经费资助（RGC）

时间：2018年4月12日 下午3点至4点

地点：MBA阶梯教室

Abstract: The nucleolus in cooperative gametheory is an important solution concept for researchers in many academic areas.However, the lack of analytic (closed-form) solutions for the nucleolus limitsits applications in the analysis of n-player allocation problems. Weinvestigate whether there exists a set of coalitional games for which we canderive an analytic nucleolus solution, and explore how our results can beapplied to solve allocation-related operational problems. We consider diminishing contributions games, which represent a set of coalitional games that exhibit diminishing marginal contributions with respect to coalition size. For such games, we develop a necessary and sufficient condition for the non-emptiness of the core, which is different from but simpler than the Bondareva--Shapley condition. Then, we obtain an analytic nucleolus solution for diminishing contributions games with a non-empty core, and examine the least core value for the games with an empty core. We study a code-sharing game, a group-buying game, and a scheduling profit game to demonstrate the existence of diminishing contributions games and illustrate the applications of our analytic results in operational problems. We also investigate increasing marginal cost games. Our analytic results are expected to help researchers investigate allocation problems analytically rather than numerically.

Biography: Professor Mingming Leng is a Professor of Operations Management in the Department of Computing and Decision Sciences of the Faculty of Business at Lingnan University. He is also the Founding Director of the Master of Science Programme in eBusiness and Supply Chain management. Professor Leng holds a Ph.D. degree in Management Science/System from McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business, Canada. He is currently interested in operations and supply chain management, game theory, and interface between operations and other disciplines. He has published a number of papers in top-tier or highly-respected journals such as Operations Research, Production and Operations Management, Naval Research Logistics, IIE Transactions, Operations Research Letters, Decision Sciences, European Journal of Operational Research, and others. Moreover, Professor Leng is a member in the Editorial Review Board of Production and Operations Management, and the Associate Editor for INFOR: cnformation Systems and Operational Research. In addition to academic experiences, Professor Leng has five years working experience in industry.