William L. Cooper

Research Interests

• Revenue Management and Pricing

• Applied Probability

Employment

• University of Minnesota

  • • Professor (Fall 2013-Present)

    • Associate Professor (Fall 2005-Summer 2013)

    • Assistant Professor (Fall 1999-Summer 2005)

Education

• Ph.D., Industrial Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 1999

• B.A., Mathematics, University of Pennsylvania, 1993

• Niloufar Mirzavand Boroujeni, Krishnamurthy Iyer, and William L. Cooper. Decentralized Signaling Mechanisms, 2025.

• Tongqing Chen and William L. Cooper. Pricing a product with network effects for sale to a fixed population of customers. Naval Research Logistics, 72(2), 200-219, 2025.

• Fatemeh Nosrat, William L. Cooper, and Zizhou Wang. Pricing for a product with network effects and mixed logit demand. Naval Research Logistics, 68(2), 159-182, 2021.

• Yan Liu, William L. Cooper, and Zizhou Wang. Information provision and pricing in the presence of consumer search costs. Production and Operations Management, 28(7), 1603-1620, 2019.

• Chenhao Du, William L. Cooper, and Zizhou Wang. Optimal worst-case pricing for a logit demand model with network effects. Operations Research Letters, 46(3), 345-351, 2018.

• Chenhao Du, William L. Cooper, and Zizhou Wang. Optimal pricing for a multinomial logit choice model with network effects. Operations Research, 64(2), 441-455, 2016.

• Yan Liu and William L. Cooper. Optimal dynamic pricing with patient customers. Operations Research, 63(6), 1307-1319, 2015.

• William L. Cooper, Tito Homem-de-Mello, and Anton J. Kleywegt. Learning and pricing with models that do not explicitly incorporate competition. Operations Research, 63(1), 86-103, 2015.

• William L. Cooper and Bharath Rangarajan. Performance guarantees for empirical Markov decision processes with applications to multiperiod inventory models. Operations Research, 60(5), 1267-1281, 2012.

• William L. Cooper and Le Li. On the use of buy up as a model of customer choice in revenue management. Production and Operations Management, 21(5), 833-850, 2012.

• Saif Benjaafar, William L. Cooper, and Setareh Mardan. Production-inventory systems with imperfect advance demand information and updating. Naval Research Logistics, 58(2), 88-106, 2011.

• Kannapha Amaruchkul, William L. Cooper, and Diwakar Gupta. A note on air-cargo capacity contracts. Production and Operations Management, 20(1), 152-162, 2011.

• Dan Zhang and William L. Cooper. Pricing substitutable flights in airline revenue management. European Journal of Operational Research, 197(3), 848-861, 2009.

• Dan Zhang and William L. Cooper. Managing clearance sales in the presence of strategic customers. Production and Operations Management, 17(4), 416-431, 2008.

• Kannapha Amaruchkul, William L. Cooper, and Diawkar Gupta. Single-leg air-cargo revenue management. Transportation Science, 41(4), 457-469, 2007.

• William L. Cooper and Tito Homem-de-Mello. Some decomposition methods for revenue management. Transportation Science, 41(3), 332-353, 2007.

• William L. Cooper, Tito Homem-de-Mello, and Anton J. Kleywegt. Models of the spiral-down effect in revenue management. Operations Research, 54(5), 968-987, 2006.

• William L. Cooper and Diwakar Gupta. Stochastic comparisons in airline revenue management. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 8(3), 221-234, 2006.

• Dan Zhang and William L. Cooper. Revenue management for parallel flights with customer-choice behavior. Operations Research, 53(3), 415-431, 2005.

• Saif Benjaafar, William L. Cooper, and Joon-Seok Kim. On the benefits of pooling in production-inventory systems. Management Science, 51(4), 548-565, 2005.

• Diwakar Gupta and William L. Cooper. Stochastic comparisons in production yield management. Operations Research, 53(2), 377-384, 2005.

• William L. Cooper, Shane G. Henderson, and Mark E. Lewis. Convergence of simulation-based policy iteration. Probability in the Engineering and Informational Sciences, 17(2), 213-234, 2003.

• William L. Cooper. Asymptotic behavior of an allocation policy for revenue management. Operations Research, 50(4), 720-727, 2002.

• William L. Cooper and Richard L. Tweedie. Perfect simulation of an inventory model for perishable products. Stochastic Models, 18(2), 229-243, 2002.

• William L. Cooper. Pathwise properties and performance bounds for a perishable inventory system. Operations Research, 49(3), 455-466, 2001. 

• William L. Cooper, Volker Schmidt, and Richard F. Serfozo. Skorohod-Loynes characterizations of queueing, fluid, and inventory processes. Queueing Systems, 37(1-3), 233-257, 2001.

• William L. Cooper. Negative binomial sums of random variables and discounted reward processes. Journal of Applied Probability, 35(3), 589-599, 1998.

• Dan Zhang. Graduated 2005. Dissertation: Revenue management with customer choice. Current Position: Professor, Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado.

• Tara Mardan. Graduated 2006 (co-advised with S. Benjaafar). Dissertation: Control policies for stochastic production-inventory systems. Current Position: Senior Manager, Research Science, Amazon, Seattle, WA.

• Kannapha Amaruchkul. Graduated 2007 (co-advised with D. Gupta). Dissertation: Models for air-cargo allotment management and booking control. Current Position: Associate Professor, Graduate School of Applied Statistics, National Institute of Development Administration, Bangkok, Thailand.

• Le Li. Graduated 2010. Dissertation: On the use of some misspecified models of customer choice in revenue management. Current Position: Head of Enterprise Data Science, ZipRecruiter, Seattle, WA.

• Yan Liu. Graduated 2015 (co-advised with Z. Wang). Dissertation: Optimal pricing with new models of consumer behavior. Current Position: Associate Professor, Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies, Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

• Chenhao Du. Graduated 2017 (co-advised with Z. Wang). Dissertation: Pricing for multinomial logit choice models with network effects. Current Position: Data Scientist, Wayfair, Boston, MA.

• Xiaochen Zhang. Graduated 2021. Dissertation: New optimization models and algorithms for logistics and delivery problems. Current Position: Research Scientist, Facebook/Meta, Menlo Park, CA.

• Fatemeh Nosrat. Graduated 2022. Dissertation: Pricing and assortment planning problems with network effects under mixed multinomial logit choice models. Current Position: Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Florida.

• Niloufar Mirzavand Boroujeni. Graduated 2024 (co-advised with K. Iyer). Dissertation: The cost of decentralized persuasion. Current Position: Data Scientist, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX.

• Revenue management with network effects. PI: W. L. Cooper, Co-PI: Z. Wang. National Science Foundation, 2015-2020.

• Model accuracy and learning in revenue management and dynamic pricing. PIs: W. L. Cooper, T. Homem-de-Mello, A. J. Kleywegt. National Science Foundation, 2007-2011.

• Stochastic optimization for revenue management. PI: W. L. Cooper, Co-PI: T. Homem-de-Mello. National Science Foundation, 2001-2005.

• Joint optimization of resource allocation and operational decisions for improving random yield. PI: D. Gupta, Co-PI: W. L. Cooper. National Science Foundation, 2001-2004.

• Air-cargo revenue management in the presence of intermediaries. PI: D. Gupta, Co-PI: W. L. Cooper. National Science Foundation, 2004-2006.

• IE 3521/4521 Statistics, Quality, and Reliability (Taught many times)

• IE 4011 Stochastic Models (Taught many times)

• IE 5532 Stochastic Models (Taught three times)

• IE 8532 Stochastic Processes and Queueing Systems (Taught many times)

• IE 8533 Advanced Stochastic Processes and Queueing Systems (Taught three times)

• IE 8534 Advanced Topics: Pricing and Revenue Management (Taught once)

• IE 8534/8990 Advanced Topics: Markov Decision Processes (Taught twice)

• Chair of INFORMS Revenue Management and Pricing Section (2010-2011)

• Director of Graduate Studies, Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Minnesota (2009-2023)

• Department Editor, Revenue Management, Production and Operations Management (2012-2015)

• Associate Editor, Stochastic Systems (2017-2023)

• Associate Editor, Operations Research (2006-2021)

• Associate Editor, Management Science (2009-2014)

• Senior Editor, Production and Operations Management (2006-2011)

• Associate Editor, IIE Transactions (2005-2008)

• Co-Chair, 2024 INFORMS MSOM Conference, Minneapolis, MN

• Program Chair, 2013 INFORMS Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, MN

• Program Co-Chair, 2016 INFORMS International Meeting, Waikoloa, HI

• Referee for journals including Operations Research; Management Science; Mathematics of Operations Research; Manufacturing & Service Operations Management; Transportation Science; Stochastic Systems; IIE Transactions; Probability in the Engineering and Informational Sciences; Stochastic Models; Queueing Systems; Naval Research Logistics; Production and Operations Management; Annals of Operations Research; IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics; European Journal of Operational Research; The Engineering Economist; INFOR; Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management; INFORMS Transactions on Education