Scholars@Duke
Aleksandar Pekec

Aleksandar Pekec

Peterjohn-Richards Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
Fuqua School of Business
pekec@duke.edu
Box 90120, Durham, NC 27708-0120
100 Fuqua Drive, Fuqua School of Business, Box 90120, Durham, NC 27708-0120

Selected Publications

A primal-dual approach to analyzing ATO systems

Journal Article Management Science · November 1, 2020 We study assemble-to-order (ATO) problems from the literature. ATO problems with general structure and integrality constraints are well known to be difficult to solve, and we provide new insight into these issues by establishing worst-case approximation gu ... Full text Cite

Managing Innovation Spillover in Outsourcing

Journal Article Production and Operations Management · October 1, 2020 When an innovator outsources the manufacturing of an innovative product to a contract manufacturer (CM) which is also a competitor in the end market, the potential innovation spillover may be a serious concern. We study an innovator’s outsourcing decision ... Full text Cite

Mechanism and network design with private negative externalities

Journal Article Operations Research · May 1, 2017 A revenue-maximizing monopolist is selling a single indivisible good to buyers who face a loss if any of its rival buyers obtain it. The rivalry is modeled through a network, an arc between a pair of buyers indicates that a buyer considers another buyer it ... Full text Cite

Scaling invariance and a characterization of linear objective functions

Journal Article Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) · October 31, 2011 A decision-maker who aims to select the "best" collection of alternatives from the finite set of available ones might be severely restricted in the design of the selection method. If the representation of valuations of available alternatives is subject to ... Full text Cite

Money for nothing: Exploiting negative externalities

Journal Article Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce · June 30, 2011 We show that existence of negative externalities among market participants competing for a scarce resource, a setting typical for electronic commerce and internet advertising, allows for emergence of the no-allocation equilibrium with positive revenues for ... Full text Cite

Relevance to practice and auction theory: A memorial essay for Michael Rothkopf

Journal Article Interfaces · September 1, 2008 This essay assesses the state of auction theory in a particular dimension: its relevance to practice. Most auction models are more abstract than necessary. They depend on assumptions that are highly unlikely to occur in practical situations, which are ofte ... Full text Cite

Revenue ranking of discriminatory and uniform auctions with an unknown number of bidders

Journal Article Management Science · September 1, 2008 An important managerial question is the choice of the pricing rule. We study whether this choice depends on the uncertainty about the number of participating bidders by comparing expected revenues under discriminatory and uniform pricing within an auction ... Full text Cite

Information aggregation in auctions with an unknown number of bidders

Journal Article Games and Economic Behavior · March 1, 2008 Information aggregation, a key concern for uniform-price, common-value auctions with many bidders, has been characterized in models where bidders know exactly how many rivals they face. A model allowing for uncertainty over the number of bidders is essenti ... Full text Cite

Sequential vs. single-round uniform-price auctions

Journal Article Games and Economic Behavior · March 1, 2008 We study sequential and single-round uniform-price auctions with affiliated values. We derive symmetric equilibrium for the auction in which k1 objects are sold in the first round and k2 in the second round, with and without revelation of the first-round w ... Full text Cite

On the existence of an increasing symmetric equilibrium in (k+1)-st price common value auctions

Journal Article Review of Economic Design · April 1, 2006 In a classical result, Milgrom (1981a) established that the Monotone Likelihood Ratio Property (MLRP) is a sufficient condition for the existence of an increasing symmetric equilibrium in (k+1)-st price common value auctions. We show: (1) If MLRP is violat ... Full text Cite

Listen to your neighbors: How (not) to reach a consensus

Journal Article SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics · April 1, 2004 We study the following rather generic communication/coordination/ computation problem: In a finite network of agents, each initially having one of the two possible states, can the majority initial state be computed and agreed upon by means of local computa ... Full text Cite

The repeated insertion model for rankings: Missing link between two subset choice models

Journal Article Psychometrika · January 1, 2004 Several probabilistic models for subset choice have been proposed in the literature, for example, to explain approval voting data. We show that Marley et al.'s latent scale model is subsumed by Falmagne and Regenwetter's size-independent model, in the sens ... Full text Cite

Combinatorial auction design

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 2003 Combinatorial auctions have two features that greatly affect their design: computational complexity of winner determination and opportunities for cooperation among competitors. Dealing with these forces trade-offs between desirable auction properties such ... Full text Cite

Subset comparisons for additive linear orders

Journal Article Mathematics of Operations Research · January 1, 2002 This paper investigates algebraic and combinatorial properties of the set of linear orders on the algebra of subsets of a finite set that are representable by positive measures. It is motivated by topics in decision theory and the theory of measurement, wh ... Full text Cite

Meaningful and meaningless solutions for cooperative n-person games

Journal Article European Journal of Operational Research · September 16, 2001 Game values often represent data that can be measured in more than one acceptable way (e.g., monetary amounts). We point out that in such a case a statement about cooperative n-person game models might be "meaningless" in the sense that its truth or falsit ... Full text Cite

The role assignment model nearly fits most social networks

Journal Article Mathematical social sciences · May 1, 2001 Role assignments, introduced by Everett and Borgatti [Mathematical Social Sciences 26 (1991) 183], who called them role colorings, formalize the idea, arising in the theory of social networks, that individuals of the same social role will relate in the sam ... Full text Cite

Majority consensus and the local majority rule

Conference Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) · January 1, 2001 We study a rather generic communication/coordination/computation problem: in a finite network of agents, each initially having one of the two possible states, can the majority initial state be computed and agreed upon by means of local computation only? We ... Full text Cite

OPTIMAL ORIENTATIONS OF ANNULAR NETWORKS

Journal Article Journal of Interconnection Networks · March 2000 Annular Network AN (c, s) is a graph representing a c × s grid in polar coordinates. We give bounds for the diameter of orientations of AN (c, s) and provide orientations which show that bounds are tight in most cases. ... Full text Cite

On the Meaningfulness of Optimal Solutions to Scheduling Problems: Can an Optimal Solution be Nonoptimal?

Journal Article · June 1998 We consider the problem of finding an optimal schedule for jobs on a single machine when there are penalties for both tardy and early arrivals. We point out that if attention is paid to how these penalties are measured, then a change of scale of measuremen ... Cite

Computationally manageable combinational auctions

Journal Article Management Science · January 1, 1998 There is interest in designing simultaneous auctions for situations such as the recent FCC radio spectrum auctions, in which the value of assets to a bidder depends on which other assets he or she wins. In such auctions, bidders may wish to submit bids for ... Full text Cite

On the meaningfulness of optimal solutions to scheduling problems: Can an optimal solution be nonoptimal?

Journal Article Operations Research · January 1, 1998 We consider the problem of finding an optimal schedule for jobs on a single machine when there are penalties for both tardy and early arrivals. We point out that if attention is paid to how these penalties are measured, then a change of scale of measuremen ... Full text Cite

Optimization under ordinal scales: When is a greedy solution optimal?

Journal Article Mathematical Methods of Operations Research · June 1997 Mathematical formulation of an optimization problem often depends on data which can be measured in more than one acceptable way. If the conclusion of optimality depends on the choice of measure, then we should question whether it is meaningful to ask fo ... Cite

Effects of change of scale on optimality in a scheduling model with priorities and earliness/tardiness penalties

Journal Article Mathematical and Computer Modelling · June 1, 1997 We consider the effect of changes of scale of measurement on the conclusion that a particular solution to a scheduling problem is optimal. The analysis in this paper was motivated by the problem of finding the optimal transportation schedule when there are ... Full text Cite

Optimization under ordinal scales: When is a greedy solution optimal?

Journal Article Mathematical Methods of Operations Research · January 1, 1997 Mathematical formulation of an optimization problem often depends on data which can be measured in more than one acceptable way. If the conclusion of optimality depends on the choice of measure, then we should question whether it is meaningful to ask for a ... Full text Cite

A winning strategy for the Ramsey graph game

Journal Article Combinatorics Probability and Computing · January 1, 1996 We consider a 'Maker-Breaker' version of the Ramsey Graph Game, RG(n), and present a winning strategy for Maker requiring at most (n - 3)2n-1 +n + 1 moves. This is the fastest winning strategy known so far. We also demonstrate how the ideas presented can b ... Full text Cite

Sequential vs. Single-Round Uniform-Price Auctions

Scholarly Edition We study sequential and single-round uniform-price auctions with affiliated values. We derive symmetric equilibrium for the auction in which k1 objects are sold in the first round and k2 in the second round, with and without revelation of the first-roun ... Cite