A note on bias optimality in controlled queueing systems

The use of bias optimality to distinguish among gain optimal policies was r ecently studied by Haviv and Puterman [1] and extended in Lewis et al. [2]. In [1], upon arrival to an M/M/1 queue, customers offer the gatekeeper a r eward R. If accepted, the gatekeeper immediately receives the reward, but i s charged a holding cost, c(s), depending on the number of customers in the system. The gatekeeper, whose objective is to 'maximize' rewards, must dec ide whether to admit the customer. If the customer is accepted, the custome r joins the queue and awaits service. Haviv and Puterman [1] showed there c an be only two Markovian, stationary, deterministic gain optimal policies a nd that only the policy which uses the larger control Limit is bias optimal . This should the usefulness of bias optimality to distinguish between gain optimal policies. In the same paper, thy conjectured that if the gatekeepe r receives the reward upon completion of a job instead of upon entry, the b ias optimal policy will be the lower control limit. This note confirms that conjecture.