Unfair Consequence of Fair Competition in Service Systems—An Agent-Based and Queueing Approach

Wai Kin (Victor) Chan () and Baojun Gao ()
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Wai Kin (Victor) Chan: Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York 12180
Baojun Gao: School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei Province 430072, People's Republic of China

Service Science, 2013, vol. 5, issue 3, 249-262

Abstract: This paper considers the competition of service centers within a service system. Each service center is modeled as a multiple-server queue. Service centers compete with each other in a fair manner and adjust their service resources (number of servers) to accommodate the demand obtained from the competition. An agent-based approach is used to model the competition and adjustment processes. Our objective is to study the size distribution of service centers under a fair competition, i.e., to answer the question, will the size distribution be uniform, normal, or skewed? It turns out that a skewed distribution (e.g., power law distribution) is obtained. Two data sets of hospital sizes are analyzed and are found to have a skewed distribution. An analytical argument is provided to explain how a fair competition could give rise to a skewed (i.e., unfair) size distribution.

Keywords: agent-based model; service system; queueing system; competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:orserv:v:5:y:2013:i:3:p:249-262

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