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We introduce a new NCP-function in order to reformulate the nonlinear complementarity problem as a nonsmooth system of equations. This new NCP-function turns out to have stronger theoretical properties than the widely used Fischer-Burmeister function and other NCP-functions suggested previously. Moreover, numerical experience indicates that a semismooth Newton method based on this new NCP-function performs considerably better than the corresponding method based on the Fischer-Burmeister function. Key words. nonlinear complementarity problem -Newton's method -semismoothnessThe Fischer-Burmeister function has many interesting properties. However, it has limitations in dealing with monotone complementarity problems since it is too flat in the

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This paper extends previous work on the distribution-free newsvendor problem, where only partial information about the demand distribution is available. More specifically, the analysis assumes that the demand distribution f belongs to a class of probability distribution functions (pdf) ℱ with mean μ and standard deviation σ. While previous work has examined the expected value of distribution information (EVDI) for a particular order quantity and a particular pdf f, this paper aims at computing the maximum EVDI over all f ∈ ℱ for any order quantity. In addition, an optimization procedure is provided to calculate the order quantity that minimizes the maximum EVDI.

A non-interior continuation method is proposed for nonlinear complementarity problems. The method improves the non-interior continuation methods recently studied by Burke and Xu 1] and Xu 29]. Our de nition of neighborhood for the central path is simpler and more natural. In addition, our continuation method is based on a broader class of smooth functions introduced by Chen and Mangasarian 7]. The method is shown to be globally linearly and locally quadratically convergent under suitable assumptions.