Given a system of multiple agents (such as a transportation system of multiple users, a market of competing product portfolios), we quantify the overall system performance when the system is at an equilibrium state. Furthermore, we research into introduction of incentive-compatible mechanisms to the systems to improve system performance at equilibrium.

A related interest is in game theoretic approaches to security on networks: either patrolling networks against intrusion or searching networks for hidden devices. In these games one player is a mobile "searcher", while the other is a stationary "attacker" or "hider". More generally, there is an interest in what are known as search games.

ORMS faculty

• Steve Alpern
• Bo Chen

Selected publications

S. Alpern and B. Chen (2016). The importance of voting order for jury decisions made by sequential majority votes. European Journal of Operational Research. (DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2016.09.053)

S. Alpern and V.J. Baston (2016). The secretary problem with a selection committee: do conformist committees hire better secretaries? To appear in: Management Science.

S. Alpern, R. Fokkink, and M. Simanjuntak (2016) Optimal search and ambush for a hider who can escape the search region, European Journal of Operational Research 251(3), 707-714.

S. Alpern and T. Lidbetter (2015) Optimal trade-off between speed and acuity when searching for a small object, Operations Research 63(1), 122-133.

B. Chen, X. Chen, and X.-D. Hu (2010). The price of atomic selfish ring routing, Journal of Combinatorial Optimization 19(3), 258–278.

B. Chen and S. Gurel (2012). Efficiency analysis of load balancing games with and without activation costs. Journal of Scheduling 15(2), 157–164.

B. Chen, S. Li, and Y. Zhang (2014). Strong stability of Nash equilibria in load balancing games. Science China Mathematics 57(7), 1361–1374.

S. Gal, S. Alpern, and J. Casas (2015). Prey should hide more randomly when a predator attacks more persistently, Journal of The Royal Society Interface 12, 113.

K. Papadaki, S. Alpern, T. Lidbetter, and A. Morton (2016). Patrolling a border. To appear in: Operations Research.

C. Wang, X. Doan and B. Chen (2014). Price of anarchy for non-atomic congestion games with stochastic demands. Transportation Research Part B: Methodological 70, 90–111.