Self-Regulation of an Unobservable Queue

Moshe Haviv () and Binyamin Oz ()
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Moshe Haviv: Department of Statistics and Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 91905 Jerusalem, Israel
Binyamin Oz: Department of Statistics, University of Auckland, Auckland 1042, New Zealand

Management Science, 2018, vol. 64, issue 5, 2380-2389

Abstract: We consider an unobservable M / M /1 queue where customers are homogeneous with respect to service valuation and cost per unit time of waiting. It is well known that left to themselves, in equilibrium, customers join the queue at a rate higher than is socially optimal. Hence, regulation schemes, under which the resulting equilibrium joining rate coincides with the socially optimal one, should be considered. We suggest a classification of regulation schemes based on a few desired properties and use it to classify schemes from the existing literature. To the best of our knowledge, none of the existing schemes possesses all of the properties, and in this paper we suggest such a scheme. Its novelty is in assigning random priorities to customers, prior to their decision whether to join or balk. We also introduce variations of this regulation scheme as well as others that are also based on randomization. The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2728 . This paper was accepted by Gad Allon, operations management.

Keywords: preemptive random priority; regulation of a queue; strategic behavior in queue (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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