There are, of course, problems with a coin flip. Passengers and their bags may or may not be subject to a detailed search depending on whether a light turns red when they push a button. One could implement a similar system simply by admitting an arriving customer based on a coin flip. One would then have fewer arrivals and thus less congestion. If she needed service, then she may or may not be turned away based on an exogenous signal. A customer would or would not have a need for service on a given day. First, if one assumes that the need for service was completely exogenous (as would be the case in most standard queuing models), odd/even rationing would work fine. So there are a couple of things to note here. I have to admit that I love that last quote since it could equally apply to every paper I have written. William Huss, co-author of a 1981 paper with a similar conclusion, added that while his model “has a solid mathematical foundation, its assumptions regarding driver behavior are hypothetical and logical but not necessarily based on psychological research.” Goldfarb and co-authors found the odd-even rationing system could lengthen waits, because people who normally spaced out refills by an odd number of days-say, five days-might move up their regular refills to every four days to avoid running out. “I’m not sure our analysis transfers directly to the Sandy shortage situation,” said Robert Goldfarb, an economist at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. On the one hand, studies of when similar schemes were used in the early 70s claim to show they were ineffective but even those studies authors think this time may have been different. Turns out there is no clean answer on this. Now, the Numbers Guy column and blog at the Wall Street Journal is asking whether it worked ( Fuel Rationing Is Hard to Gauge, Nov 16, and Does Odd-Even Rationing Work?, Nov 17). Those with plated ending in even numbers got to buy on even days and those with odd numbers got to buy on odd days. Instead, they implemented Nixonian rationing based on license plate numbers. Of course, neither states cleared station owners to jack prices up. Stories abounded about wasted time and why allowing price gouging would actually be good. Here at the Operations Room, we love queues and few queues have gotten as much attention lately as the lines of drivers waiting to buy gasoline in New Jersey and New York following the hurricane.
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