Journal of Management Research
Year : 2022, Volume : 22, Issue : 1
First page : ( 3) Last page : ( 18)
Print ISSN : 0972-5814. Online ISSN : 0974-455X.

Reneging and Balking in Resource Sharing Systems

Gupta Varun

Associate Professor, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Online published on 28 October, 2022.

Abstract

TIn this paper, we consider a queueing theoretic model of resource sharing systems. Users arrive according to a Poisson process to a queue that is served by a Processor Sharing server. A user may choose not to join the system on arrival (balk), or join but quit at any later point (renege). Since a user who reneges wastes resources, the central question we study in the paper is: What is the welfare loss of allowing users to renege, compared to when they can only balk? We show that reneging does lead to weakly smaller welfare than balking, but this result is brittle to the reneging model. We compare two different models of reneging, a random lottery based model, and an age-based model, and show that for the latter, the equilibrium is identical to the balking equilibrium. We also prove that any non-zero penalty fees on reneging removes this feature from equilibrium behavior. Finally, we provide asymptotic and numerical comparisons of welfare under the socially optimal policy and under balking and reneging equilibria.

Top

Keywords

Processor Sharing, Reneging, Balking, Congestion Games.

Top