Informs Annual Meeting Phoenix 2018

INFORMS Phoenix – 2018

SD55

n SD55 North Bldg 232C Joint Session Sports/Practice Curated: Sports Analytics III

n SD56 West Bldg 101A Social Interactions in the Sharing Economy Sponsored: Manufacturing & Service Oper Mgmt/Supply Chain Sponsored Session Chair: Laurens G. Debo, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, 03755, United States Co-Chair: Guangwen Kong 1 - Blockbuster or Niche? Competitive Strategy under Network Effects Ming Hu, University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management, 105 St. George Street, Toronto, ON, M5S 3E6, Canada, Yinbo Feng We provide a theory that unifies the long tail and blockbuster phenomena. We show analytically that a growing network effect always contributes to more sales concentration on a small number of products, supporting the blockbuster phenomenon. However, product variety and investments in quality, as an outcome of firms’ ex ante competitive decisions, may increase or decrease, as the network effect grows. 2 - The Leverage from Family and Friends: Manage Outside Funds in a Crowd-funding though Inside Behrooz Pourghannad, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55414, United States, Guangwen Kong, Laurens G. Debo We study how an entrepreneur can use the funds from her social network, i.e. her family and friends, during his crowd-funding campaign. We investigate how the investment from family and friends may impact on the amount of investment that entrepreneur could seek, and how reciprocities play a role in revealing the information of a crowd-funding campaign. 3 - Strategic Surge Pricing and Forecast Communication in On- demand Service Platforms Harish Guda, University of Texas-Dallas, 2700 Waterview Parkway, #4424, Richardson, TX, 75080, United States, Upender Subramanian We examine pricing and communication strategies of on-demand service platforms, explicitly accounting for the platform’s and workers’ incentives to serve consumers in adjacent market zones. We show when, how and why surge pricing may be counterintuitively used even in zones where supply exceeds demand to further imbalance supply and demand. 4 - Choosing the Optimal Campaign Mode in Reward Based Crowdfunding Simone Marinesi, Assistant Professor of Operations Management, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 19103, United States, Ekaterina Astashkina, Karan Girotra We compare two alternative campaign modes for rewards-based crowdfunding campaigns, Fixed Funding and Flexible Funding. In contrast to prior literature, which argues that Fixed Funding is superior to Flexible Funding, we show that each campaign mode can outperform the other, depending on the characteristics of the project, and we provide recommendations for how to choose between the two. n SD57 West Bldg 101B New Advances in Appointment Scheduling and Online Resource Allocation Sponsored: Health Applications Sponsored Session Chair: Mark P. Van Oyen, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-2117, United States Co-Chair: Esmaeil Keyvanshokooh, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, MI, 48108-1020, United States 1 - Prioritizing Access to Hepatitis C Treatment in U.S. Prisons Turgay Ayer, Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Groseclose 417, Atlanta, GA, 30332, United States, Can Zhang, Anthony Bonifonte, Jagpreet Chhatwal, Anne Spaulding HCV prevalence in prison systems is ten times higher than the general population, and hence prison systems offer a unique opportunity to control the HCV epidemic. New HCV treatment drugs are very effective, but providing treatment to all inmates is prohibitively expensive. As such, current practice recommends prioritizing treatment based on clinical and incarceration-related factors. However, there is controversy about how these factors should be incorporated because of the complicated tradeoffs. In this study, we propose a restless bandit modeling framework to support hepatitis C treatment prioritization decisions in U.S. prisons.

Sponsored: SpORts Sponsored Session Chair: Keith A. Willoughby, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5A7, Canada 1 - Ratio Breakers: Analyzing Drafting Strategy in the Canadian Football League Keith A. Willoughby, University of Saskatchewan, Department of Finance and Mangement Science, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5A7, Canada, Kent Kostuk The Canadian Football League (CFL) deploys a “game rule ratio mandating that Canadian athletes comprise at least 21 members of a team’s 44-player roster. This regulation requires team management to strategically evaluate Canadian talent in order to assemble competitive rosters. The primary source of Canadian player recruitment is the league’s annual draft. We analyze over two decades of draft results and determine a number of insights to guide drafting strategies. 2 - Modeling Extra Inning Decisions in Softball Kent J. Kostuk, Federated Co-Operatives Limited, 9 Cantlon Crescent, Saskatoon, SK, S7J 2T2, Canada, Keith A. Willoughby In softball when teams are tied after the regulation 7th inning they continue to play additional innings to determine a winner. In an effort to reduce the number of extra innings, each half inning starts with a runner on 2nd base. A typical defensive philosophy is to always focus on preventing runners from advancing. Alternatively, offensively teams will typically bunt; sacrificing an out in an effort to improve the likelihood of scoring. We will develop a model that will allow us to quantify the efficacy of these classic defensive and offensive strategies. 3 - Understanding the Female/male Velocity Ratio of Olympic Champions in Running, Speed Skating, Swimming and Rowing Raymond Stefani, California State University, Long Beach, CA, United States Photographs of male and female Olympic champions taken about 80 years apart show little change in physiology but major changes in the competitive conditions that would increase efficiency. Thus, if both genders are now equally trained and equally efficient, then performance ratios should depend on physiology ratios, which are likely to have changed little. Equations are derived from physiology and physics for which power times efficiency depends on performance, physiology and other factors common to both genders. Assuming equal training and efficiency, the velocity ratio of female/male Olympic champions simplify when populated with kinesiology data from over 2000 athletes in the various types of competition. The velocity ratio for running and speed skating is estimated to be the relative lean-to-weight (LTW) ratio while for swimming and rowing the estimate is the 8/9 power of the relative LTW ratio. The approach appears to be validated in that, for 1992-2016, elite female athletes had 90% of the lean-to- weight ratio that men had and, in fact, their Olympic champions ran, swam and rowed about 90% as fast. For 1980 to 2014, in speed skating, elite female athletes had 92% of the lean-to-weight ratio of men and their Olympic champions skated 92% as fast. 4 - Predictive Power of the (1, a) Method Compared to Traditional Sports Ranking Methods Baback Vaziri, James Madison University, 2210 Reserve Circle, Unit 203, Rockingham, VA, 22801, United States, Shaunak Dabadghao Ideally, a ranking method for a sports tournament will be not only fair and comprehensive, but it will also possess strong predictive power. In a recent article, the (1, a) method was proposed as being fair and comprehensive in comparison with other popular sports ranking methods. In this study, we compare the predictive power of the (1, a) method against five (5) popular sports ranking methods for NFL, NHL and NBA seasons from 2001-2015. We also show which values of a are best suited for the (1, a) method to maximize the methods’ predictive power based on sport. 5 - Effects of Major League Baseball Manager Attributes on Team Performance Seong Dae Kim, Associate Professor, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Chattanooga, TN, 37403, United States, J.C. Kim For the 2017 season, an average salary of the top-5 highest-paid managers is a $4.5 M. 4 out of 5 managers are employed with teams located in large cities. Many of them have a lot of experience as a manager and are highly paid. But hiring an experienced manager could be a difficult decision to teams in small markets. Teams may want to consider hiring a more affordable and less experienced but promising young manager to save money to hire good players. To address this problem, this study analyzes data sets about MLB managers using data analytics techniques to explore the effects of the manager’s attributes on the team performance. This study will help MLB teams hire a right manager with a tight budget.

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