Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
10321571 Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 2005 16 Pages PDF
Abstract
We model the trade balance problem as a minimum cost circulation problem (MCC) on a network. When the products have uniform cost or when the products can be traded in fractional units, we solve the problem exactly. Otherwise, we present a novel stochastic rounding algorithm that takes the fractional optimal solution to the trade balance problem and produces a valid integer solution. We then make use of a greedy heuristic that attempts to match buyers and sellers so that the average number of suppliers that a buyer must use to satisfy a given product need is minimized. We present results of empirical evaluation of our algorithms on test problems and on simulations built using data from an operating trade exchange.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Computer Science Artificial Intelligence
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