INFORMS Open Forum

Management Science: June 2020

  • 1.  Management Science: June 2020

    Posted 06-01-2020 09:39

    Dear Colleagues,

     

    As we are finishing the academic year, I would like to express my appreciation to the entire community for supporting the journal during this stressful time that has affected academic research, education and daily life. Indeed, throughout this unprecedented time, authors submitted 10% more papers in the first five months of the year than during the same period last year. Similarly, the referees, associate editors, and the editorial board provided timely response and substantive evaluations, similar to last year, despite all the pandemic challenges.

     

    I am particularly proud of the innovative papers published by Management Science, many of which are practically relevant and theoretically elegant. One such example is the paper "Design of Lotteries and Wait-lists for Affordable Housing Allocation," by Nick Arnosti and Peng Shi, Management Science, 2020, Volume 66, Issue 6. The paper is motivated by the use of lotteries or wait-lists in the allocation of affordable housing to applicants. The authors show that some of the widely-used allocation systems do not succeed at matching applicants to suitable apartments and they go on to propose several alternatives that achieve better matching. I asked Professor Paul Milgrom from Stanford University and Professor Martin A. Lariviere of Northwestern University to reflect on the importance and contributions of this research. You can read their perspectives in the blog page of the journal.

     

    I would like to remind you of the Management Science Special Issue on Business and Climate Change. The Special Issue seeks research that provides the insights that managers need to operate in a world in which climate change affects freshwater availability and quality, sea levels, ambient temperature and moisture, and the frequency and intensity of hurricanes, droughts, and floods. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many aspects of life and may delay research projects and papers submissions to the special issue. At the same time, COVID-19 offers opportunities for researchers to understand how companies can prepare for climate related disruption, or analyze the impact of lockdown, reduced mobility, remote work and other measures on the environment, in general, and carbon emissions in particular. Indeed, measures taken by different regions to stop the pandemic-from social distancing, and traffic suspension to centralized isolation and quarantine-can lead scientists to research that can inform policymakers. Such research is already going on in our community and the special issue can provide an effective way to disseminate this important research. But with or without the special issue, the Management Science Editorial Board welcome this type of research. For all these reasons, the editorial board and the special issue guest editors have decided to extend the submission deadline to February 28, 2021; you can read more, here.

      

    David Simchi-Levi

    Editor-in-Chief

    Management Science

    E-mail: mseic@mit.edu

     



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    David Simchi-Levi
    Professor of Engineering Systems
    Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    Cambridge MA
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