International Society of Dynamic Games

Dynamic Games and Applications Seminar

Store-Wide Space Planning with Multiple Objectives – Retailing Meets Health and Queueing Theory

Feb 20, 2026 11:00 AM — 12:00 PM (Montreal time)

Hybrid seminar at HEC Montréal, room EY (1st floor, blue section) or Zoom

A growing research stream concerns space planning that takes a “store-wide” view by considering the problem of allocating all product categories to store shelves, a problem also referred to “macro space planning.” This talk presents recent work on store-wide space planning emphasizing different objective functions, e.g., impulse profit, shopping convenience, and health. The methodology of the research emphasizes spatial demand models, which are embedded in nonlinear integer programs that are then linearized to provide good solutions with popular solvers. We describe the key building blocks of these recent models, and discuss managerial insights and computational challenges, within the context of two supermarkets in different continents.

Viewing the shopping area as a self-service system with infinite capacity, classical queueing theory, mainly Little’s law and the standard M/G/∞ system, provides useful insights and allows expanding the scope of the model. We explicitly capture aspects such as social distancing constraints, shopping visit duration, and the effect of traffic variability.

Dynamic Games and Applications Seminar

Stable partitions in networks with the costs dependent on neighborhood composition

Feb 5, 2026 11:00 AM — 12:00 PM (Montreal time)

Zoom webinar link

We study a discrete-time, infinite-horizon process of partition formation. We introduce two cost functions for maintaining connections within a network, allowing the cost of a link between two players to depend on the composition of each player’s neighborhood. Stable partitions are characterized when players interact on a star network, a complete network, and on balanced complete bipartite networks. Finally, we apply the model to Zachary’s karate club network, providing an explanation for why two specific individuals can be viewed as group leaders. Numerical simulations on random networks further illustrate the process and underscore the theoretical intractability of the problem. (With Elena Parilina)

Dynamic Games and Applications Seminar

Will Generative AI Empower or Replace Us? Task Creation, Automation, and the Wage-Productivity Gap

Jan 29, 2026 11:00 AM — 12:00 PM (Montreal time)

Zoom webinar link

This paper analyzes whether generative artificial intelligence (AI) empowers or replaces workers by endogenizing the sequencing of innovation between task creation and automation. We develop a dynamic model in which firms invest in task creation, which expands labor-performed activities, and automation, which reallocates existing tasks to machines. Firms optimally switch from task creation to automation at a unique and irreversible time. This sequencing generates rising wages early on and declining wages later, while productivity increases throughout, producing an endogenous wage–productivity gap. We further derive a welfare-based, stage-contingent innovation policy, showing that uniform interventions are inefficient.