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We provide a comprehensive characterization of the relationship between optimal capacity and the degree of product substitution/complementarity under price/production postponement, considering different business practices (holdback versus clearance, negative price policies) and different demand models. Specifically, we consider a firm that produces two products, which can be substitutable or complementary. The demand of each product is a linear function of the prices of both products (with the relationship depending on the substitution/complementarity structure), and is subject to an additive stochastic shock. We consider two types of linear demand functions that are commonly used in the economics and operations management literature. The firm operates in a monopolistic setting and acts as a price-setter for both products. Overall the firm needs to make three sets of decisions: capacity, production quantities, and prices. While the capacity investment decision has to be made ex-ante observation of demand curves, price and/or quantity decisions can be postponed until after demand curves are observed. We consider two postponement strategies: price and quantity postponement, and price postponement only. We characterize the optimal pricing/production/investment decisions for each postponement strategy. Using these characterizations, we show that product substitution/complementarity is a key demand characteristic, which has a large impact on the optimal capacity. Our results show that how the optimal capacity behaves in substitution/complementarity parameter is quite similar under both postponement strategies, and under holdback and clearance. However, this behavior depends highly on other underlying assumptions (i.e., whether or not negative prices are allowed) and on the demand model used. / Ph. D.

Probability-one homotopy algorithms have strong convergence characteristics under mild assumptions. Such algorithms for mixed complementarity problems (MCPs) have potentially wide impact because MCPs are pervasive in science and engineering. A probability-one homotopy algorithm for MCPs was developed earlier by Billups and Watson based on the default homotopy mapping. This algorithm had guaranteed global convergence under some mild conditions, and was able to solve most of the MCPs from the MCPLIB test library. This thesis extends that work by presenting some other homotopy mappings, enabling the solution of all the remaining problems from MCPLIB. The homotopy maps employed are the Newton homotopy and homotopy parameter embeddings. / Master of Science

Thesis: M.S., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mathematics, 1979 / Bibliography: leaf 61. / by Paulo Arruda Villela. / M.S. / M.S. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mathematics

In this thesis, we report recent results on existence for complementarity problems in infinite-dimensional spaces under generalized monotonicity are reported.

The International Criminal Court and the principle of complementarity Abstract The principle of complementarity is often referred to as the cornerstone of the International Criminal Court's functioning ("Court" or "ICC"), so the purpose of my thesis is to analyze complementarity in more detail. The Preamble of the Rome Statute ("Statute") provides that the Court "shall be complementary to national criminal jurisdictions". Complementarity means that the ICC will act only when domestic authorities fail to take the certain steps in the investigation or prosecution of crimes enumerated under article 5 of the Statute. My thesis consists of seven chapters. First three chapters are introductory and show a historical and practical background of the establishment of the ICC. Chapter four explains that there exist various forms of the relationship between an international criminal jurisdiction and national jurisdictions, not just complementary. This chapter is subdivided into several parts which firstly describe a particular forms of these relationships and then give an example of such a relations existing in reality. The following chapter inquires into the roots of complementary idea. It highlights that the principle of complementarity included in the Statute was not the outcome of the International Law Commission's...

Cette thèse a pour objet l'étude des Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication (TIC) en tant que Technologie Générique (TG) ainsi que leur rôle dans l'évolution de la productivité du travail aux Etats-Unis et en Europe durant les dernières décennies. La thèse est constituée de trois parties axées chacune sur l'une des trois propriétés fondamentales des TG: le progrès rapide de la technologie, l'ubiquité de la technologie et la capacité à créer des opportunités technologiques. La première partie décrit, dans un premier chapitre, l'innovation dans le domaine des TIC, en commençant par un bref historique de ces technologies, suivie d'une analyse des données contemporaines sur l'innovation dans ce domaine. Elle montre en particulier comment les Etats-Unis ont été, jusqu'à présent, plus performants que les pays Européens dans le développement des TIC. Dans un deuxième chapitre, cette première partie inventorie les difficultés de mesures induites par la vitesse et la nature du changement généré par ces technologies. La seconde partie de la thèse traite de la nature ubiquitaire des TIC. Elle décrit d'abord la diffusion des TIC au cours du temps à travers les pays et les secteurs économiques, puis, établit une revue de la littérature sur la contribution directe de la diffusion des TIC à la croissance de la productivité du travail aux US et en Europe. Le second chapitre de cette partie s'intéresse au comportement de demande de facteurs de production dans les secteurs producteurs de TIC ou intensifs en utilisation des TIC. Enfin, la troisième partie de la thèse se concentre sur la capacité des TIC à générer des opportunités d'innovation. Pour cela elle identifie d'abord la nature des innovations complémentaires et les efforts menant à ces innovations. Elle montre alors la nécessité d'améliorer la comptabilité nationale afin de prendre en compte ces efforts comme des investissements. Cette partie révèle ensuite que, dans les onze pays européens étudiés, le problème est particulièrement concentré sur quelques pays qui investissent peu en TIC et en actifs innovants et que ces deux types d'efforts sont complémentaires. / This thesis aims to study Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) as a General Purpose Technology (GPT) and their role in the labor productivity evolution in the United States and Europe during recent decades. This thesis is organized in three parts corresponding to the fundamental GPT features: the wide possibilities for development, the ubiquity of the technology and the ability to create large technological opportunities. The first part depicts, at first, the innovation in ICT, beginning with a short historical review of ICT inventions followed by the analysis of current data on innovation in this field. In particular, it shows how the US was better than the European countries in inventing ICT until now. Second, this first part makes an inventory of measurement difficulties due to the rate and the nature of the change created by such technologies. The second part of the thesis deals with the ubiquitous nature of ICT. It first describes the ICT diffusion across countries and industries and reviews the economic literature on the direct contribution of ICT on labor productivity growth in the US and Europe. The next chapter studies the factor demand's behaviour in sectors that are either ICT producers or ICT intensive users. The third part focuses on the ICT ability to create opportunities for complementarity innovations. Firstly, it identifies the nature of ICT complementary innovations and the corresponding efforts. It shows, then, that national accounts must be improved in order to take these efforts into account as investments. Secondly, this part shows that, among the eleven European countries studied, the problem is highly concentrated in a few countries that invest less both in ICT and in innovative assets and that these two types of effort are complementary.

Stocker de grandes quantités de données complexifie les interactions avec les systèmes de Business Intelligence (BI). Les systèmes de recommandation semblent un choix logique pour aider les utilisateurs dans leur analyse. Ils extraient des comportements de données historiques et suggèrent des actions personnalisées, potentiellement redondantes, via des scores de similarité. La diversité est essentielle pour améliorer la satisfaction des utilisateurs, d’où l’intérêt particulier accordé aux recommandations complémentaires. Nous avons étudié deux problèmes concrets d’exploration de données en BI et proposons de découvrir et exploiter les intentions utilisateur pour fournir deux recommandeurs de requête. Le premier, un recommandeur collaboratif réactif original basé sur l’intention, recommande des séquences de requêtes à l’utilisateur pour poursuivre son analyse. Le second propose proactivement un ensemble de requêtes pour compléter un rapport BI, en fonction di contexte utilisateur. / The storage of big amounts of data may lead to a series of long questions towards the expected solution which complicates user interactions with Business Intelligence (BI) systems. Recommender systems appear as a natural solution to help the users complete their analysis. They try to discover user behaviors from the past logs and to suggest personalized actions by predicting lists of likeness scores, which may lead to redundant recommendations. Nowadays, diversity is becoming essential to improve users’ satisfaction, thus, a special interest is dedicated to complementary recommendation. We studied two concrete data exploration problems in BI and we propose to discover and leverage the user intents to provide two query recommenders. The first, an original reactive collaborative Intent-based Recommender, recommends sequences of queries for the user to pursue her analysis. The second one proactively proposes a bundle of queries to complete user BI report, based on the user intents.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T16:57:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Rogerio Ferreira da Fonseca.pdf: 1033862 bytes, checksum: 7874e284aff29ac820ecbd35113c89ae (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-11-26 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This research is theoretical and has the goal of studying the concept of the real number. Epistemological issues are discussed surrounding the concept of number in general, and in particular the concept of real numbers. The discussions are based on the concept of complementarity as regards the analysis of cognitive and epistemological aspects of mathematical concepts. The focus of the research is to investigate a new proposal for the concept of numbers presented by the British mathematician John Horton Conway of Princeton University, which allows one to uniquely answer the question, What is a number? , which has long mobilized Mathematics philosophers and epistemologists. In addition, for this theory, a class of games is presented as a model for interpretation or application of the theory, thereby conceptualizing number as a game. Moreover, the game has assisted in learning Mathematics. We can conclude with this research that Conway s theory, in a complementary manner, can add new elements to the classical approaches to the concept of number, can indicate some of its weaknesses, and can highlight the importance of epistemological questioning in the evolution of mathematical knowledge. Another result of this research is to indicate the fertility of the concept of number that opens new frontiers for Mathematics. It is our opinion that Mathematics Education needs to be and should be close to advances in Mathematics / Esta pesquisa é de cunho teórico e tem por alvo o estudo do conceito de número real. Nela são discutidas questões de ordem epistemológicas que cercam o conceito de número, em geral, e em particular o conceito de número real. As discussões estão fundamentadas no conceito de complementaridade no que concerne à análise de aspectos cognitivos e epistemológicos de conceitos matemáticos. O foco da pesquisa é investigar uma nova proposta de conceituação de número apresentada pelo matemático inglês John Horton Conway, da Universidade de Princeton, a qual possibilita responder, de forma única, à questão: o que é número?, indagação que mobilizou filósofos e epistemólogos da Matemática por muito tempo. Além disso, para esta teoria uma classe de jogos se apresenta como um modelo de interpretação ou aplicação da teoria, conceituando então número como um jogo. Aliás, o jogo tem sido um auxiliar na aprendizagem da Matemática. Podemos inferir com esta pesquisa que a teoria de Conway de forma complementar pode acrescentar novos elementos às abordagens clássicas da conceituação de número, apontar algumas de suas fragilidades e destacar a importância dos questionamentos epistemológicos para a evolução do conhecimento matemático. Outro resultado desta pesquisa é indicar a fertilidade do conceito de número que ainda abre novas fronteiras para a Matemática. É nosso julgamento que a Educação Matemática precisa e deve estar próxima dos avanços da Matemática