Talk by Moshe Haviv (DSAS colloquium)

Title: Externalities, Optimization and Regulation in Queues

Abstract: The academic research on queues deals mostly with waiting. Yet, the externalities,  namely the added waiting time an arrival inflicts on others, are of no less, if not of more, importance. The talk will deal mostly with how the analysis of  externalities leads to the socially optimal behavior, while solving queueing dilemmas such as whether or not to join a queue, when to arrive to a queue, or from which server to seek service at. Customers, being selfish, do not mind the externalities they impose on others. We show how in queues too, internalizing the externalities leads to self regulation. In this setting selecting the service regime is one of the tools in one's arsenal. (Joint with Binyamin Oz)

Moshe Haviv holds a B.Sc. (1979) in mathematics from Tel Aviv University, and M.A. (1982) and Ph.D. (1983) in operations research from Yale University. He joined the department of statistics at the Hebrew University in 1984 and with some intermissions, mostly at the University of British Columbia and at the University of Sydney, has been there since, currently as a Professor. He served as head of department there in 2008-2012. Moshe was the  president of the  Operations Research Society of Israel in 2009-2012. His research areas are queueing systems in general and strategic decision making in queues, in particular. This involves models from non-cooperative as well as cooperative game theory. Other areas of interest are numerical issues in Markov chains, and Markov decision processes. Among his publications, a booked titled “To queue or not to queue: Equilibrium behaviour in queueing systems”, co-authored with Refael Hassin and published by Kluwer in 2003. He also published a textbook “Queues: A Course in Queueing Theory” (2013) by Springer. He also published around 75 research papers in prestigious refereed journals (http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~haviv/).