Abstract: We study an unobservable single-server queue with uncertain arrival rates, where customers arrive according to a Poisson process with a random arrival rate, and decide whether to pay for priority. We characterize the equilibrium customer behavior under different pricing and information-disclosure policies. The model is analyzed under two different assumptions regarding the customers' degree of rationality. The first assumes that customers are fully rational and take into account the fact that the ASTA (arrivals see time averages) property does not hold, and base their behavior on the RASTA (rate-biased ASTA) phenomenon. The second assumes that customers are naive and base their decision on the PASTA phenomenon, despite the non-Poisson arrival process. The talk will first discuss the RASTA phenomenon and its implications for analyzing strategic behavior in queues with arrival rate uncertainty.

Bio: Dr.Binyamin Oz is a senior lecturer at the Business School and a member of the Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Currently a visiting professor at Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.  He is a council member of the Operations Research Society of Israel (ORSIS). In the years 2016-2018 he was a postdoctoral research fellow, working with Prof. Ilze Ziedins, at the Department of Statistics, the University of Auckland. He did his PhD in the Department of Statistics and the Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  His advisor was Prof. Moshe Haviv. His research interests are mostly in operations research and include stochastic modeling, queueing theory, decision making, and strategic behavior in queues.