Resource Allocation

In an important new study, HKUST’s Guodong Lyu and colleagues show how to optimize resource allocation under stochastic demand. Improving on previous frameworks, they demonstrate that the analysis of three different classes of allocation policy can be unified from the customer perspective, through the concept of the service level. This gives rise to a ... 閱讀更多

Education is one of the top expenditures for families, especially in Asia. For example, the average expenditure on a child’s education from primary school to undergraduate level in Hong Kong is more than any other regions/countries in the world. When examined closer, some educational purchases are made to develop a child’s strengths (i.e., strength-focused ... 閱讀更多

Cash transfer programs (CTPs) have spread in the last decade to help fight extreme poverty in different parts of the world. However, these programs face challenges related to both exclusion errors, where households below the poverty line do not receive the intended support, and inclusion errors, where cash reaches households that do not require assistance. A ... 閱讀更多

Since the 1960s, agricultural production has moved towards contract farming in an attempt to lower both costs and risks of production while increasing quantities and both farmers and buyers’ profits. The authors of this paper have sought to determine and analyse the effect this move has had on the efficiency and returns enjoyed by both contract and non ... 閱讀更多

Innovation plays an essential role in economic growth. Every year, governments, private enterprises, and venture capitalists (VCs) invest billions of dollars and other resources in research and development (R&D) to foster innovation. Often, they are targeting the same group of consumers. This raises a crucial question for innovation investors. How should ... 閱讀更多

In 2019, there were over 4,700 seed-stage investments globally, along with significant recent interest in how resources are mobilized during the earliest stages of the entrepreneurial journey. Seed-stage startups work towards finalizing their product or services in addition to gathering market data. This also includes finding enough funding to develop an ... 閱讀更多

Many innovative products are designed to satisfy the demand of specific target consumers; thus, the innovators will inevitably compete with each other in the product market. We investigate how a profit-maximizing principal should properly allocate her limited resources to support the innovations of multiple potentially competing innovators. We find that ... 閱讀更多