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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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We consider the problem of designing a profit-maximizing pricing-scheduling policy for a service facility serving heterogeneous customers with private information about their service value and time-sensitivity. Our main results are: (a) If customers belong to one of finitely many types, an optimal pricing-scheduling policy can be found in polynomial time under certain natural conditions on the problem data; and (b) If customer-types form a continuum, we characterize conditions under which a natural priority auction mechanism is optimal. This work lies at the interface of economics and queueing theory, and draws on techniques from these disciplines.
