This paper was developed from my reflections on an interdisciplinary critical making experiment in which I, visual artists, and computer programmers wrote, designed, and made a videogame, entitled Anathema, and a "Complete Companion" for the game that served as its booklet. I argue for the importance and continuing relevance of booklets and other textual objects accompanying videogames as there is no established scholarship on the topic and no ongoing debate or dialogue on the issue within the field of game studies. I demonstrate the ways that multiple modes of media, i.e. the game and its external objects, allow the narrative to break free of the individual media's constraints and overcome the perceived binary between mechanics-oriented and narrative-oriented videogames. I examine the evolution of booklets' roles in videogames by looking at key examples from early, millennial, and contemporary examples, including F-Zero, Diablo II, and the Mass Effect series. I also compare examples across genres, markets, and distribution methods, including independently produced and digitally distributed games. Finally, I draw on my own work on Anathema, the relationship between form and content within that project, and the role of the booklet therein to demonstrate the narrative and mechanical advantages of a multi-modal videogame. I conclude that while innovative mechanics can contribute to a multi-modal narrative in-game, the incorporation of both analogue and digital textual objects facilitates a more complete interaction with the art form.

In this thesis we consider some network design games that arise from common network design problems. A network design game involves multiple players who control nodes in a network, each of which has a personal interest in seeing their nodes connected in some manner. To this end, the players will submit bids to a mechanism whose task will be to select which of the players to connect, how to connect their nodes, and how much to charge each player for the connection. We rely on many fundamental results from mechanism design (from [8], [9] & [5]) in this thesis and focus our efforts on designing and analyzing cost-sharing methods. That is, for a given set of players and their connection requirements, our algorithms compute a solution that satisfies all the players’ requirements and calculates ’fair’ prices to charge each of them for the connection. Our cost-sharing methods use a primal-dual framework developed by Agrawal, Klein and Ravi in [1] and generalized by Goemans &Williamson in [3]. We modify the algorithms by using the concept of death-time introduced by K¨onemann, Leonardi & Sch¨afer in [6]. Our main result is a 2-budget balanced and cross-monotonic cost sharing method for the downwards monotone set cover game, which arises naturally from any downwards monotone 0, 1-function. We have also designed a 2-budget balanced and cross-monotonic cost sharing method for two versions of the edge cover game arising from the edge cover problem. These games are special cases of the downwards monotone set cover game. By a result by Immorlica, Mahdian & Mirrokni in [4] our result is best possible for the edge cover game. We also designed a cross-monotonic cost sharing method for a network design game we call the Even Parity Connection game arising from the T-Join problem that generalizes proper cut requirement functions. We can show our algorithm returns cost shares that recover at least half the cost of the solution. We conjecture that our cost sharing method for the even parity connection game is competitive and thus 2-budget balance.

Abstract The modeling and analysis of multilateral negotiations are studied under the assumption that reaching an agreement is the main objective of the negotiators. A new methodology and associated definitions are proposed to predict the outcomes of such negotiations. The general objective of the new methodology is to study movements from one state to another in multilateral negotiations, to predict stable agreements, and to study their properties. The assumptions that the set of possible agreements is discrete and specified in advance make the negotiation problems considered here distinctive. Each decision maker has two concerns: first, achieving an alternative that is as preferable as possible; second, building support for this alternative among the other decision makers. In summary, this research consists of a systematic investigation of multilateral negotiations with the following general characteristics: • Decision makers in the negotiation seek a resolution that is not only feasible but also stable (enduring). Of course, each negotiator tries to attain the most preferable agreement for himself or herself. • If an agreement is reached, it must be an alternative from a pre-specified list, and all of the decision makers must accept the agreement. • Decision makers can possess different levels of power (or legitimacy) in support of an agreement, so the negotiation is not necessarily symmetric. Moreover, the analysis makes use of the decision makers’ preference orders over the proposed alternatives only, and does not require cardinal representations of their preferences. New concepts including State, Acceptability, Feasibility, Stability, and Fallback Distance are defined to pave the way for the proposed methodology. It is based on four types of movements, from unstable states toward stable ones, including preferential improvement, agglomeration, disloyalty move, and strategic disimprovement. Some criteria and algorithms are proposed to measure the likelihood of different moves and different outcomes. An important theorem shows that all four types of movement are mutually exclusive. The evolution of a negotiation from its status quo to the most likely outcomes is illustrated, using a tree. Several applications demonstrate that the proposed methodology can be applied to identify the most likely outcomes of a multilateral negotiation. Sensitivity analyses can be applied in several different ways to assess whether sudden or unforeseen changes in the model affect the conclusions. Several methods can be used from the literature for predicting the outcome of a negotiation. Social Choice Rules, Fallback Bargaining Procedures, and Bankruptcy Solutions are applied to the current negotiations over the legal status of the Caspian Sea to predict or recommend the most appropriate resolution among the proposed alternatives. In addition, the applicability of Graph Model for Conflict Resolution and its associated decision support system (DSS), GMCR II, are briefly discussed. Reasons why these methods are not appropriate when reaching an agreement is the main objective of decision makers (DMs) are then put forward. Based on the conceptual model for multilateral negotiations proposed in this thesis, a practical Negotiation Support System (NSS) is designed and implemented in Microsoft Access using Microsoft Visual Basic. This NSS increases the speed and accuracy of calculations. In the output of this NSS, all movements from initial states to subsequent states and their associated likelihoods are clearly illustrated, and all stable agreements are distinguished. Two real-world multilateral negotiations, over the legal status of the Caspian Sea and over the Epton site brownfield redevelopment project in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, are modeled and analyzed using the proposed methodology. To measure DMs’ weights quantitatively in the Caspian Sea negotiations, eleven criteria that can be considered to be important determinants of countries’ capabilities are discussed, evaluated, and integrated using a Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis model. The Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method is employed to find the most favourable set of relative importance of different criteria for each country. Applying the proposed methodology indicates that unanimous agreements over the division of the Caspian Sea, either based on the International Law of the Seas or based on Soviet maps, are most likely as the enduring legal status of the Caspian Sea. The objective of applying the proposed methodology to actual negotiations over the redevelopment of a brownfield project is to ensure that the new methodology is flexible enough to model more real-world cases. Moreover, we wanted to test how well the actual outcomes of the real world negotiations match the most likely outcomes identified by the methodology. The results show that the decisions on the use of the Epton site followed the most likely path described and predicted by the model. This thesis is multidisciplinary in nature. It utilizes different branches of knowledge, including applied mathematics (game theory), computer science and programming, international relations, and environmental management. However, negotiation modeling and analysis in this thesis is developed from a systems engineering perspective.

Transportation is important in making supply chain decisions. With the careful consideration of transportation expenses, the performance of each supply chain member, as well as the entire supply chain, could be improved significantly. The purpose of this research is: 1) to explore and identify the various situations that relate to replenishment and transportation activities; and 2) to reveal the strength of the connection between purchase quantity and transportation discounts, and integrate the two discounts to enhance supply-chain coordination. The problem is analyzed and categorized into four representative cases, depending on transportation. To aid the supplier or the carrier to determine the discount that should be offered, in light of the buyer's reaction to that discount, decision models are proposed under three different circumstances. First, assuming a single product, we investigate the quantity discounts from the supplier's perspective, via a noncooperative game-theoretical approach and also a joint decision model. Taking into account the price elasticity of demand, this analysis aids a sole supplier in establishing an all-unit quantity discount policy in light of the buyer's best reaction. The Stackelberg equilibrium and the Pareto-optimal solution set are derived for the noncooperative and joint-decision cases, respectively. Our research indicates that channel efficiency can be improved significantly if the quantity discount decision is made jointly rather than noncooperatively. Moreover, we extend our model in several directions: (a) the product is transported by a private fleet; (b) the buyer may choose to offer her customers a different percentage discount than that she obtained from the supplier; and (c) the case of multiple (heterogeneous) buyers. Numerical examples are employed, here and throughout the thesis, to illustrate the practical applications of the models presented and the sensitivity to model parameters. Secondly, we consider a situation with a family of SKUs for which the supplier will offer a quantity discount, according to the aggregate purchases of the product group. Management of those items is based on the modified periodic policy. From the supplier's point of view, what are the optimal parameters (breakpoint and discount percentage)? For deterministic demand, we discuss the cases in which demand is both constant and price-sensitive. First as a noncooperative Stackelberg game, and then when the two parties make the discount and replenishment decisions jointly, we illustrate the impact of price-sensitivity and joint decision making on the supplier's discount policy. The third approach studies the case in which transportation of the goods by a common carrier (a public, for-hire trucking company) is integrated in the quantity discount decisions. In reality, it is quite difficult for the carrier to determine the proper transportation discount, especially in the case of LTL (less-than-truckload) trucking. This is not only because of the "phantom freight" phenomenon, caused by possible over-declaration of the weight by the shipper, but also due to the fact that the discount relates to both transportation and inventory issues. In this research, we study the problem of coordinating the transportation and quantity discount decisions from the perspectives of the parties who offer the discounts, rather than the ones that take them. By comparison of the noncooperative and cooperative models, we show that cooperation provides better overall results, not only to each party, but also to the entire supply chain. To divide the extra payoffs gained from that cooperation, we further conduct a coalition analysis, based upon the concept of "Shapley Value." A detailed algorithm and numerical examples are provided to illustrate the solution procedure. Finally, the thesis concludes with comprehensive remarks. We summarize the contributions of this thesis, show the overall results obtained here, and present the directions that our research may take in the future.

<p>This dissertation uses game-theoretic modeling, statistical testing, and case studies to analyze how authoritarian governments manage the news media to maintain regime stability, control local officials, and make reform. In the first essay, ``Regime Competence and Media Freedom in Authoritarian States'', I explain why some authoritarian regimes allow more media freedom than others, as they tradeoff increased rents when the media is suppressed with the reduced risk of being misjudged by citizens when the media is free. In the second essay, ``Local Media Freedom, Protest Diffusion, and Authoritarian Resilience'', I argue that media reports about citizen protests, which may lead to protest diffusion, do not necessarily destabilize authoritarian rule. If protests are targeted at local governments, the central government of an authoritarian regime can use media-induced protest cascades to force local officials to improve governance. In the last essay, ``Central Rhetoric and Local Reform in China'', I address the puzzle of why the Chinese government would furnish the state media with conservative and dogmatic rhetoric on the one hand and allow reform on the other, by showing that this strategy is used to control local governments' pace of reform.</p> / Dissertation

We consider a decentralized, two-echelon supply chain where the upper echelon --the supplier-- bears the inventory risk. To service the retailers, the supplier either keeps inventory reserved for each of her customers or else pools inventory to share among her customers. The common insight regarding inventory pooling is that it reduces costs and so increases profits for the supply chain party carrying inventory. However, it has recently been shown that inventory pooling may indeed reduce the total supply chain profits. We further show that inventory pooling may reduce supply chain profits even under traditional service contracts based on the frequently invoked measure of service, probability of stock-out. We model the inventory transactions among the retailers and the supplier as a cooperative game. The players have the option of reserving inventory or forming inventory-pooling coalitions. The total profit of the coalitions is allotted to the players using a profit-sharing mechanism based on Shapley value. We analyze the properties of the proposed profit-sharing scheme in two steps. We first consider a stylized model with two retailers who are not necessarily identical. Then we extend the analysis to an arbitrary number of identical retailers. In both cases, we assume the demand across retailers is independent. We find that the Shapley value allocations coordinate the supply chain and are individually rational. However for more than two retailers, they may not be in the core. Even when they satisfy all the stability properties, including membership in the core, they may be perceived unfair since a player's allocation can exceed his contribution to the total supply chain profit. In addition to analyzing the stability properties of the proposed allocation mechanism, we are also interested in the types of behavior the mechanism induces in the players. We find that the retailers prefer pooling partners with either very high or low service level requirements and the supplier prefers retailers with low service requirements since this gives her the ability to maximize her profit allocation. Finally, we analyze the effects of demand variance on the allocations and the profitability of strategic retailer coalitions.

This dissertation analyzes the economic incentives involved in three distinct supply chain and revenue management decision environments. The first study examines the adoption of the percent deviation contract in a supply chain to induce the buyer to share some of the demand risk in an environment in which the buyer would typically place her order when she has full knowledge of the customer demand levels. The subgame-perfect Nash Equilibrium decisions are characterized, and the percent deviation is shown to achieve full supply chain channel coordination in cases where a simpler contract cannot. Pareto-improving examples based on industry demand data are presented and discussed. The second section considers a revenue management problem for sports and entertainment organizations. Given that the organization starts the selling season by offering ticket packages exclusively, the optimal time during the selling season for the organization to begin selling individual-event tickets is derived. Extensions of the base model are developed to include multiple ticket packages and heterogeneous ticket packages. The model is illustrated using empirical data sets obtained from the Georgia Tech Athletic Department and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. The third section develops a model of vendor-controlled category management in which vendors are in charge of the stocking and assortment decisions for a given amount of shelf space at a vendor when the retailer retains control over the retail price. The subgame-perfect Nash Equilibrium strategies for two vendors and a single retailer are analyzed, and a revenue-sharing contract is shown to coordinate the channel when the vendors can produce multiple brands in a given product category and shelf space is sufficiently large or small.

As computer and communication networks become prevalent, the Internet has been a battlefield for attackers and defenders. One of the most powerful weapons for attackers is the Internet worm. Specifically, a worm attacks vulnerable computer systems and employs self-propagating methods to flood the Internet rapidly. The objective of this research is to characterize worm attack behaviors, analyze Internet vulnerabilities, and develop effective countermeasures. More specifically, some fundamental factors that enable a worm to be designed with advanced scanning methods are presented and investigated through mathematical modeling, simulations, and real measurements. First, one factor is an uneven vulnerable-host distribution that leads to an optimal scanning method called importance scanning. Such a new method is developed from and named after importance sampling in statistics and enables a worm to spread much faster than both random and routable scanning. The information of vulnerable-host distributions, however, may not be known before a worm is released. To overcome this, worms using two sub-optimal methods are then investigated. One is a self-learning worm that can accurately estimate the underlying vulnerable-host distribution while propagating. The other is a localized-scanning worm that has been exploited by Code Red II and Nimda worms. The optimal localized scanning and three variants of localized scanning are also studied. To fight against importance-scanning, self-learning, and localized-scanning worms, defenders should scatter applications uniformly in the entire IP-address space from the viewpoint of game theory. Next, a new metric, referred to as the non-uniformity factor, is presented to quantify both the unevenness of a vulnerable-host distribution and the spreading ability of network-aware worms. This metric is essentially the Renyi information entropy and better characterizes the non-uniformity of a distribution than the Shannon entropy. Finally, another fundamental factor is topology information that enables topological-scanning worms. The spreading dynamics of topological-scanning worms are modeled through a spatial-temporal random process and simulated with both real and synthesized topologies.

Models of strategic behavior are usually too complex to conduct large scale analyses, and frequently rely on accurate descriptions of the strategic environment, or unrealistic assumptions which render empirical studies very sensitive to misspecification. This dissertation relates game-theoretic frameworks to models of causality inference and thus provides a reliable method to identify price leadership. Therefore, causal models can be used to study large sets of data without imposing strategic behavior a priori. A case study is provided by analyzing the supply chain relationship among Dominick's Finer Foods and its suppliers. Although our data required aggregation, this empirical analysis successfully determined causal patterns for 60 percent of our sample. Of these price leaderships, 70 percent elicit Manufacturer Stackelberg relationships which tend to be associated with manufacturers that hold big market shares, 25 percent elicit Retailer Stackelbergs which seem to be associated with the biggest retailer margin profits, and only 5 percent elicit a monopolistic retailer with vertical coordination. These results agree with observations made by other authors and the market structure of the 1990's. Moreover, the strategic relationship among the suppliers is also studied. Interestingly, the dominant firms tend to isolate themselves from the price leadership, whereas the second largest firms seem to become price leaders. Our studies agree with the market literature as well. In particular, we find price leadership in a firm which was identified as a low cost leader. Finally, we discovered that the private label does not lead any firm's price unless this firm is the provider of a generic brand.

After the global trend of telecommunication liberalization in the 90s, mobile service market in West Europe, North America, Japan and Korea are moving from a rapid-growing stage to a mature stage. With the fierce market competition, the ARPU¡]Average Revenue Per User¡^coming from the voice service of mobile communication is gradually declining, and the whole market is facing a dilemma of price wars. Meanwhile, with the development of communication technology, Mobile Data Services have been launched progressively around the world. To prevent from becoming the victims like those in the internet bubbles again, every mobile communication service operator uses the differential market strategies as counterplots. This research is based on the viewpoint of changing business game taken from the co-opetition theory that was proposed by Braudenburge and Nalebuff in 1996. This research intended to explore the current status and the trend of global mobile communication services, and the market co-opetition strategies of leading companies. Furthermore, this research compares the global status with the related domestic environment and proposes a model of market strategy in this industry for our country and some suggestions for future development to change the business game of the industry. The result of this research suggests that the pure competition between mobile service providers and Value-Net players shall no longer exist, and shall be replaced by another relationship of mutually compensate cooperation and simultaneously both competition and cooperation. If those domestic operators could follow the co-opetition model to change the element of business game properly and to shape correct market strategies, it will very possibly be positively beneficial to the development of our mobile communication industry in this country.