Rational Queueing

This book is a unique reference and valuable resource for anyone interested in queuing systems, both theory and practice in the modern era. It provides an up-to-date, comprehensive survey of research on the performance of queueing systems where multiple agents, like customers, servers, and central managers, all act but often in a noncooperative manner. Surveying the relavant literature and emphasizing the qualitative conclusions and insights of almost 700 papers, Refael Hassin groups these papers in a clear and coherent way, discussing the central model, main assumptions, most important qualitative insights, interesting extensions, and open questions.

Refael Hassin is a prominent figure in the area of rational queueing, a first-class scholar with an international and very highly esteemed reputation. His research has mostly focused on discrete optimization, but after writing his first paper on strategic queueing in 1983, he became interested in the economics of queues. He is well recognized both for his research contributions and for his excellent previous book on the topic. He has received three grants from the Israel Science Foundation (each of them for 3-4 years) to investigate strategic queueing systems.