Article ID: | iaor19982282 |
Country: | Netherlands |
Volume: | 88 |
Issue: | 2 |
Start Page Number: | 231 |
End Page Number: | 250 |
Publication Date: | Jan 1996 |
Journal: | European Journal of Operational Research |
Authors: | Batta Rajan, Caulkins Jonathan P., Baveja Alok, Naik Ashish V. |
Keywords: | scheduling |
This paper presents an analytical approach for scheduling crackdowns on street-corner drug markets. The crackdown scheduling problem is shown to be NP-complete. We then provide efficient optimal algorithms for several special cases and approximation algorithms for the general case. These results show that the optimal strategy is to give priority to markets that take longer to bring down and which require low levels of post-crackdown maintenance. The results are then extended to incorporate dealer displacement between drug markets.