Gravity models in competitive facility location

Abstract

I dedicate this chapter to my husband, Zvi Drezner, who has been the inspiration for my work. As a Ph.D. student in Urban Planning, I was looking for a topic for my dissertation. One evening, I asked Zvi to tell me more about his area of research. He told me about facility location, a topic about which I knew little. The conversation meandered through the different branches of location theory until Zvi mentioned one of his papers about retail location and the “fact” that people patronize the facility closest to them. I thought that this was not the case, people patronize a more attractive facility at a greater distance, and a discussion about facility attractiveness ensued. My advisor was intrigued by this new approach to modeling competitive facility location. My dissertation was born. Zvi has been an inspiration ever since. We have co-authored many papers about competitive facility location and other location topics. It has been a pleasure and honor working with him.