Model & Mechanism Development (msom-theory-development)

When to trigger

• You have a topic but no formal model or sharp operational mechanism yet
• Your "model" is a regression with no operational decision inside it
• A reviewer asks "what is the structural result?" or "what drives the effect operationally?"
• You need to decide objective, decision variables, state, and source of uncertainty

For analytical papers (the dominant M&SOM tradition)

M&SOM's historically dominant methodology is analytical/stochastic operations modeling. A strong model makes the operational decision explicit and yields structural insight, not just a numerical answer:

• Decision variables: what the operator chooses (order quantity, price, capacity, staffing, routing, contract terms).
• Objective & dynamics: expected cost/profit/welfare, often over time; specify the stochastic primitives (demand, lead time, arrivals, service times).
• Model class: newsvendor/inventory, MDP/dynamic program, queueing/diffusion, stochastic program, robust/DRO, or game-theoretic/mechanism-design — chosen because it fits the decision.
• Structural results: prove monotonicity, convexity, threshold/base-stock/index policies, comparative statics, or equilibrium existence/uniqueness — the form of the optimal policy is the insight.
• Tractability discipline: assumptions earn their keep by producing clean structure; flag where they bind and what a numerical study must then carry.