Web services have become quite popular over the last few years as they allow easier development and integration of business applications. In this paper, we consider a web service pricing problem where two providers compete through dynamic pricing. Each provider offers access to a web service with different quality classes where users may buy their required web service through a reservation system. They would like to adjust the prices of their web services over a pre-specified time horizon to manage demand and to maximize profit. Users have the right with no obligation to cancel their services as long as they pay a penalty. We consider a dynamic setting where the web service classes share a capacity. We first develop a time continuous model for competitive pricing of a web service and then we provide some insights about the equilibrium condition of the problem using open-loop differential game and propose an algorithm to obtain the optimal pricing policy for providers. Moreover, we conduct numerical analyses to examine the impacts of some parameters on control and state variables.

E-learning has recently attracted many people specially those who cannot attend traditional educational programs for different reasons such as busy schedule, long distance, etc. There is also a growing interest among many public universities to develop such programs in addition to their regular business activities. The primary question is to know how much a program cost and what is the most important factors affecting the cost of e-learning. In this paper, we present an empirical study the measure the effects of different items on the cost of e-learning programs. The proposed study of this paper gathers the necessary cost components of three governmental universities located in city of Tehran/Iran. We choose ten different cost items for our analysis and using some statistical test determine the most important ones. The preliminary study of this paper indicates that seven cost items play essential role on determining the cost of e-learning, which includes utilities, internet connection and network, employee payment, software & licensing, payments of instructors and their assistants, hardware equipments and other overhead expenditures. This could help us determine the precise cost of e-learning using activity cost method.

Sugar is one of the strategic goods in the basket of households in each country and it plays an
important role in supplying the required energy. On the other hand, it is one of the goods, which
Iranian government is about to change its subsidy strategies. To design useful sugar subsidy
strategies, it is necessary to know sugar position in the basket of households and be familiar
with households & apos; sugar demand or consumption behavior. This research estimates sugar demand
for Iranian households by using time series of 1984-2008, which is taken from central bank of
Iran. In this paper, first independent and dependent variables of household sugar demand
model are chosen based on the literature review and theory of demand. Then, sugar demand is
estimated by OLS technique and linear regression. The preliminary statistical observations such
as Durbin-Watson, F statistic and R2 indicate that the regression is admissible. The results seem
plausible and consistent with theory and show that sugar demand in Iranian households is
associated with household expenditure, relative sugar price, family size and indicate that
demand of sugar is affected during the war time. The results also show the income elasticity is
0.8 and price elasticity is -0.2 which means sugar is essential good for Iranian households and is
inelastic to price.

Financing plays an important role for renewal of old city building is find suitable financing plan. A proper financial management in one hand has a direct relationship with project main factors such as: time, cost and quality of the project, and on the other hand, achieving project goals requires a comprehensive insight of project, stockholders as well as other relative situation in regard with the project. Considering the complication of execution such projects and the number of shareholders, one of the best attitudes towards the project management is risk management. This research is a qualitative and practical, which reviews the effects of project management factors on financial return of urban renewal sachem. The required information gained through a survey and via questionnaire and interviews with specialists. This article first describes the public private financial partnership and then, based on the results gained from a case study done on one of the renewal schemes in Mashhad metropolitan areas. Next, it identifies and evaluates of positive and negative risks, which lead to threats and opportunities will be performed and will attempt to respond the existent risks. Finally, we provide a framework for the risk assessment of the housing units.

This paper presents an empirical study on measuring relative efficiencies of test drive
educational organizations using data envelopment analysis. The study uses a Delphi method to
determine the most important input/output factors and then gathers the actual data for all units
located in an Iranian province called Zanjan. The results of the implementation of the DEA
method are compared for different periods of the recent year and they are analyzed. We perform
the DEA implementation for two separate regions, one for the units located inside the city and
the other for the units located in the rural area. The output results of both methods are compared
and the results are discussed in details.

During the past two decades, there have been tremendous efforts on developing efficient business excellence models to improve the quality of organizations. A typical business excellence model proposes several alternatives with different budget and the primary objective is to use the best ones. In this paper, we present a robust LINMAP method for measuring the relative importance of various alternatives in an EFQM self assessment. The presented robust model is capable of handling uncertainty as part of the problem formulation. The proposed model of this paper is implemented for a case-study of energy sector in Iran with various alternatives. The orderings of the alternatives are measured using data from multiple experts through applying the proposed model of this paper.

Exporting goods and services play an important role on economy of developing countries. There are many countries in the world whose economy is solely based on exporting raw materials such as oil and gas. Many believe that countries cannot develop their economy as long as they rely on exporting one single group of raw materials. Therefore, there is a need to help other sectors of industries build good infrastructure for exporting diversified products. In this paper, we perform an empirical analysis to determine the critical success factors on exporting different goods. The results are analyzed using some statistical non-parametric methods and some useful guidelines are also suggested.