2016 INFORMS Annual Meeting Program

TC35

INFORMS Nashville – 2016

TC35 205A-MCC Public Sector Service Operations Sponsored: Manufacturing & Service Oper Mgmt, Service Operations Sponsored Session Chair: Gad Allon, Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management, Evanston, IL, 60208, United States, g-allon@kellogg.northwestern.edu 1 - Social Engagement And Learning In Massive Open Online Courses: Evidence From Field Experiments Dennis Zhang, Washington University, 8342 Delcrest Drive, Apt 328, University City, MO, 63124, United States, denniszhang@wustl.edu, Gad Allon, Jan A Van Mieghem This paper studies how service providers can design social interaction among participants and quantify the causal impact of that interaction on service quality. We focus on education and analyze whether encouraging social interaction among students improves learning outcomes in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which are a new service delivery channel with universal access at reduced, if not zero, cost. We analyze three randomized experiments in a MOOC with more than 30, 317 students from 183 countries. Combining results from these three experiments, we provide recommendations for designing social interaction mechanisms to improve service quality. 2 - Menu Design In Subsidized Housing Lotteries Peng Shi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pengshi@mit.edu The right to purchase subsidized housing is often allocated by lottery. When allocating multiple types of houses, one design question is whether to run the lotteries in sequence or in parallel. When the lottery is done in parallel, which is the case for example in Singapore for Build To Order (BTO) flats, another design question is what menu of options to offer at the same time. We develop a tractable model to help policy makers think about the welfare consequences of different lottery designs. 3 - Matching Applicants To Apartments In The Nyc Public Housing Waiting List Jacob Leshno, Columbia University, yarboz@gmail.com Public housing apartments become available stochastically over time, and get assigned to applicants in an overloaded waiting list. Applicants choose apartments based on their preferences and the expected wait estimates for the different apartments open to them. We combine theoretical work looking at waiting list allocation mechanism and data from the assignment from new york city to investigate efficiency of current and suggested policies. 4 - Should Hospitals Keep Their Patients Longer? The Role Of Inpatient Care In Reducing Post-discharge Mortality Carri Chan, Columbia Business School, cwchan@columbia.edu, Ann Bartel, Song-Hee Kim CMS endorsed 30-day mortality rates as important indicators of hospital quality, despite concerns that post-discharge mortality rates consider the frequency of an event that occurs after a patient is discharged and no longer under the watch and care of the hospital. Using a dataset of all Medicare hospital encounters from 2000 to 2011 and an instrumental variables methodology to address the potential endogeneity bias in hospital length-of-stay, we find evidence that 30-day mortality rates are appropriate measures of hospital quality. For patients with diagnoses of Pneumonia or Acute Myocardial Infarction, an additional day in the hospital could decrease 30-day mortality rates by up to 12.8%. TC36 205B-MCC Innovative Pricing Sponsored: Manufacturing & Service Oper Mgmt, Supply Chain Sponsored Session Chair: Yao Cui, Cornell University, 401N Sage Hall, Ithaca, NY, 14853, United States, yao.cui@cornell.edu 1 - Price Competition In The Presence Of Social Comparison And Demand Uncertainty We consider the price competition between a duopoly selling differentiated substitutable products under additive demand uncertainty, in which firms’ decisions are influenced by social comparison. Social comparison theory, as well as conventional wisdom, suggests that social comparison behaviors, such as behind aversion (upward comparison) and ahead seeking (downward comparison), all work in the similar fashion to intensify competition. We demonstrate how opposite-directional social comparisons interact with demand variability to change competitive behaviors. Yun Zhou, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, Yun.Zhou13@Rotman.Utoronto.Ca, Ming Hu, Tony H Cui

2 - The Operational Advantages Of Threshold Discounting Offers Simone Marinesi, WHARTON, marinesi@wharton.upenn.edu, Karan Girotra, Serguei Netessine We study the use of threshold discounting, the practice of offering a discounted service only if a pre-determined number of customers subscribe to the service, as pioneered by Groupon. We show novel operational advantages of these offers, including making strategic customers beneficial to the firm. 3 - Dynamic Pricing Under Debt: Spiraling Distortions And Efficiency Losses Dan Andrei Iancu, Stanford University, 655 Knight Way, Stanford, CA, 94305, United States, daniancu@stanford.edu, Omar Besbes, Nikolaos Trichakis We analyze the distortions induced by the presence of debt on a seller’s dynamic pricing policy, as well as the efficiency losses that such distortions generate. We show that sellers under debt always price higher and discount items at a lower pace than optimal, and that these distortions compounds over time, leading to a form of spiraling down in efficiency. 4 - Price Dispersion And Consumer Upgrades: Theory And Empirical Evidence From Airline Industry Yao Cui, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States, yao.cui@cornell.edu, A. Yesim Orhun, Izak Duenyas We study how the offering of premium seating upgrades affects the airline’s ticket price dispersion. We provide insights into this effect both analytically and empirically. TC37 205C-MCC Sustainable Operations II Sponsored: Manufacturing & Service Oper Mgmt, Sustainable Operations Sponsored Session Chair: Natalie Huang, Scheller College of Business - Georgia Institute of Technology, GA, United States, ximin.huang@scheller.gatech.edu 1 - Carrot Or Stick? An Analysis Of Environmental Policies In Supply Chains We examine two types of environmental policies: pollution abatement subsidy (“Carrot” policy) and pollution emission tax (“Stick” policy), in a supply chain where the manufacturer invests in a pollution abatement technology. We find the “Carrot” policy furnishes a higher incentive to the manufacturer’s pollution abatement, does not intensify double marginalization, and yields higher profits for both the manufacturer and the retailer. However, when the pollution abatement is very costly and the production emission is highly damaging, the government prefers to implement the “Stick” policy as the “Carrot” policy leads to lower social welfare and environmental performance. 2 - Strategies To Combat Refurbished And Remanufactured Counterfeit Products Morteza Pourakbar, Erasmus University, Vignolahof 14, Rotterdam, 3066 AV, Netherlands, MPourakbar@rsm.nl, Paolo Letizia, Mohammad Nikoofal End-of-life and end-of-use products are considered as one of the main sources of core acquisitions for counterfeiters. In this paper, we study what and how anti- counterfeiting strategies could be used to deter counterfeiters from producing Xuan Zhao, Associate Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University, 75 University Ave. W., Waterloo, ON, N2L3C5, Canada, xzhao@wlu.ca, Junsong Bian Narendra Singh, Indian School of Business, Sector 81, Mohali, 140306, India, narendra_singh@isb.edu, Karthik Ramachandran, Ravi Subramanian We study an OEM’s product strategy when the OEM offers a new product that depreciates over time and consumers are strategic. The OEM competes with a third-party remanufacturer for acquisition and remanufacturing of the depreciated products. We study how competition from the third-party remanufacturer affects the OEM. refurbished and re-manufactured counterfeit products. 3 - The Value Of Competition In Remanufacturing

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