{"title":"Lifting cover inequalities for the robust knapsack problem","authors":"Youngjoo Roh , Junyoung Kim , Kyungsik Lee","doi":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107301","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107301","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Robust cover inequalities are well-known valid inequalities for the robust knapsack problem (RKP). To strengthen them, we use lifting, which involves solving lifting problems—special cases of the RKP. We propose a novel lifting method that leverages upper bounds for lifting problems. First, we introduce a strong, efficiently computable, and quality-guaranteed upper bound for the RKP based on the decomposition property of its solution set. We then devise an efficient lifting method by applying the proposed upper bound to lifting problems.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54682,"journal":{"name":"Operations Research Letters","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 107301"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143895549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lisa Garcia Tercero , David Van Bulck , Fabien Nießen , Dries Goossens
{"title":"Minimal and fair waiting times for single-day sports tournaments with multiple fields","authors":"Lisa Garcia Tercero , David Van Bulck , Fabien Nießen , Dries Goossens","doi":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107300","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107300","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper studies a single-day round-robin sports tournament organized at a single location featuring multiple fields. Teams are fully rested after a certain period of not playing, and all other periods between games are declared as waiting times. Considering both efficiency and fairness regarding waiting times, we prove lower bounds on the total and maximum waiting time and develop polynomial-time algorithms with an absolute performance guarantee of at most 5 for an even number of teams and 1 for an odd number of teams.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54682,"journal":{"name":"Operations Research Letters","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 107300"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143879096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A note on the core of 2-matching games","authors":"Laura Sanità , Lucy Verberk","doi":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107299","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107299","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Cooperative 2-matching games are a generalization of cooperative matching games, where the value function is given by maximum-weight <em>b</em>-matchings, for a vertex capacity vector <span><math><mi>b</mi><mo>≤</mo><mn>2</mn></math></span>. We show how to separate over the core of 2-matching games in polynomial time, fixing a small flaw in the literature, and prove the existence of a compact extended formulation for it.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54682,"journal":{"name":"Operations Research Letters","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 107299"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143863944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Comparison between mean-variance and monotone mean-variance preferences in general markets: A new perspective","authors":"Yuchen Li , Zongxia Liang , Shunzhi Pang","doi":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107298","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107298","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We propose a general framework to analyze the relationship between mean-variance and monotone mean-variance portfolio selections. Our framework does not rely on specific market settings, requiring only that the admissible final wealth set is closed or, further convex and closed. We apply this framework to several different markets: complete market, semimartingale market, market with cone-constrained strategies, and discrete-time market. We believe this framework can be extended to other markets, offering deeper insights into the relationship between these two preferences.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54682,"journal":{"name":"Operations Research Letters","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 107298"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143854404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Q tensor tuples to polynomial complementarity problems","authors":"Tongtong Shang , Wensheng Jia","doi":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107297","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107297","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The goal of this paper is to introduce a new class of structured tensor tuples, called <em>Q</em>-tensor tuple, which is associated with the solution of polynomial complementarity problems. Some characterizations of <em>Q</em>-tensor tuple are discussed. Furthermore, the uniqueness of the solution to the corresponding polynomial complementarity problems is investigated with a nonnegative <em>Q</em>-tensor tuple. A sufficient condition is given for the nonzero solution of the corresponding polynomial complementarity problem containing at least two nonzero components.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54682,"journal":{"name":"Operations Research Letters","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 107297"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143842794","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Individual versus social optimization in statistical estimation","authors":"Moshe Haviv","doi":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107284","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107284","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A number of estimators participate in a non-cooperative game where the data they collect are reported to a central planner who takes decisions. She in her turn decides on the estimates to be imposed on the participants. Because they are aware of this, they may behave strategically and misreport. We exemplify this decision making process where the James-Stein's estimator is used by the central planner. In particular, we consider the resulting optimization or Nash equilibria reporting strategies in a number of variations of this game.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54682,"journal":{"name":"Operations Research Letters","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 107284"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143842793","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Piecewise affine decision rules for contextual chance-constrained stochastic programming","authors":"Junhao Qin , Ziyi Zou , Liu Liu , Yongchao Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107296","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107296","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper proposes a contextual chance-constrained programming model (CCCP), where a measurable function from the feature space to the decision space is to be optimized under the chance constraint. We present a tractable approximation of CCCP by the piecewise affine decision rule (PADR) method. We quantify the approximation results from two aspects: the gap of optimal values and the feasibility of the approximate solutions. Finally, numerical tests are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54682,"journal":{"name":"Operations Research Letters","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 107296"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143816649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Prophet upper bounds for online matching and auctions","authors":"José A. Soto , Victor Verdugo","doi":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107294","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107294","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In the online 2-bounded auction problem, we have a collection of items represented as nodes in a graph and bundles of size two represented by edges. Agents are presented sequentially, each with a random weight function over the bundles. The goal of the decision-maker is to find an allocation of bundles to agents of maximum weight so that every item is assigned at most once, i.e., the solution is a matching in the graph. When the agents are single-minded (i.e., put all the weight in a single bundle), we recover the maximum weight prophet matching problem under edge arrivals (a.k.a. prophet matching).</div><div>In this work, we provide new and improved upper bounds on the competitiveness achievable by an algorithm for the general online 2-bounded auction and the (single-minded) prophet matching problems. For the adversarial arrival order of the agents, we show that no algorithm for the online 2-bounded auction problem achieves a competitiveness larger than 4/11, while no algorithm for prophet matching achieves a competitiveness larger than ≈0.4189. Using a continuous-time analysis, we also improve the known bounds for online 2-bounded auctions for random order arrivals to ≈0.5968 in the general case, a bound of ≈0.6867 in the IID model, and ≈0.6714 in prophet-secretary model.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54682,"journal":{"name":"Operations Research Letters","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 107294"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143800498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Proportional-with-Leader-Bonus rules for group-buying with invitation behavior","authors":"Hang Chen , Genjiu Xu , Li Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107285","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107285","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Group-buying leverages collective purchasing power, with invitations boosting volume and profit. This paper proposes Proportional-with-Leader-Bonus (PLB) rules, allocating profit by purchasing volume and rewarding leaders for invitations. To prevent fake invitations and collusion, False-Name-Proof (FNP) and Consolidation-Proof (CP) are analyzed. Leader Income Consistency (LIC) and Bilateral Ratio Consistency (BRC) ensure fair leader rewards and balance purchasing volume and invitations. The PLB rules are axiomatically characterized by Single-person efficiency, FNP, CP, LIC, and BRC, providing a robust framework for fair profit allocation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54682,"journal":{"name":"Operations Research Letters","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 107285"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143792625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A note on fast deterministic algorithms for non-monotone submodular maximization under a knapsack constraint","authors":"Cheng Lu","doi":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107295","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.orl.2025.107295","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We present a refined analysis of a variant of the algorithm in the literature for solving the knapsack-constrained submodular maximization problem. By deriving a strong approximation bound for this variant, we reduce the size of the sets requiring enumeration, from two to one, to ensure the final algorithm achieves 1/4-approximation. As a result, we obtain the fastest deterministic algorithm so far which achieves an approximation ratio of 1/4 for the problem.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":54682,"journal":{"name":"Operations Research Letters","volume":"61 ","pages":"Article 107295"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2025-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143842792","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}