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The traditional approach to computing optimal game strategies of firms on oligopolistic markets and of indicators of such markets consists in studying linear dynamical games with quadratic criteria and solving generalized matrix Riccati equations.

The other approach proposed by the author is based on methods of operational calculus (in particular, Z-transform). This approach makes it possible to achieve economic meaningful decisions under wider field of parameter values. It characterizes by simplicity of computations and by necessary for economic analysis visibility. One of its advantages is that in many cases important for economic practice, it, in contrast to the traditional approach, provides the ability to make calculations using widespread spreadsheets, which allows to study the prospects for the development of oligopolistic markets to a wide range of professionals and consumers.

The article deals with the practical aspects of determining the optimal Nash–Cournot strategies of participants in oligopolistic markets on the basis of operational calculus, in particular the technique of computing the optimal Nash–Cournot strategies in Excel. As an illustration of the opportinities of the proposed methods of calculation, examples close to the practical problems of forecasting indicators of the markets of high-tech products are studied.

The results of calculations obtained by the author for numerous examples and real economic systems, both using the obtained relations on the basis of spreadsheets and using extended Riccati equations, are very close. In most of the considered practical problems, the deviation of the indicators calculated in accordance with the two approaches, as a rule, does not exceed 1.5–2%. The highest value of relative deviations (up to 3–5%) is observed at the beginning of the forecasting period. In typical cases, the period of relatively noticeable deviations is 3–5 moments of time. After the transition period, there is almost complete agreement of the values of the required indicators using both approaches.

The article examines the impact of non-market actions of participants in oligopolistic markets on the market structure. The following actions of one of the market participants aimed at increasing its market share are analyzed: 1) price manipulation; 2) blocking investments of stronger oligopolists; 3) destruction of produced products and capacities of competitors. Linear dynamic games with a quadratic criterion are used to model the strategies of oligopolists. The expediency of their use is due to the possibility of both an adequate description of the evolution of markets and the implementation of two mutually complementary approaches to determining the strategies of oligopolists: 1) based on the representation of models in the state space and the solution of generalized Riccati equations; 2) based on the application of operational calculus methods (in the frequency domain) which owns the visibility necessary for economic analysis.

The article shows the equivalence of approaches to solving the problem with maximin criteria of oligopolists in the state space and in the frequency domain. The results of calculations are considered in relation to a duopoly, with indicators close to one of the duopolies in the microelectronic industry of the world. The second duopolist is less effective from the standpoint of costs, though more mobile. Its goal is to increase its market share by implementing the non-market methods listed above.

Calculations carried out with help of the game model, made it possible to construct dependencies that characterize the relationship between the relative increase in production volumes over a 25-year period of weak and strong duopolists under price manipulation. Constructed dependencies show that an increase in the price for the accepted linear demand function leads to a very small increase in the production of a strong duopolist, but, simultaneously, to a significant increase in this indicator for a weak one.

Calculations carried out with use of the other variants of the model, show that blocking investments, as well as destroying the products of a strong duopolist, leads to more significant increase in the production of marketable products for a weak duopolist than to a decrease in this indicator for a strong one.

The grid-characteristic method is successfully used for solving hyperbolic systems of partial differential equations (for example, transport / acoustic / elastic equations). It allows to construct correctly algorithms on contact boundaries and boundaries of the integration domain, to a certain extent to take into account the physics of the problem (propagation of discontinuities along characteristic curves), and has the property of monotonicity, which is important for considered problems. In the cases of two-dimensional and three-dimensional problems the method makes use of a coordinate splitting technique, which enables us to solve the original equations by solving several one-dimensional ones consecutively. It is common to use up to 3-rd order one-dimensional schemes with simple splitting techniques which do not allow for the convergence order to be higher than two (with respect to time). Significant achievements in the operator splitting theory were done, the existence of higher-order schemes was proved. Its peculiarity is the need to perform a step in the opposite direction in time, which gives rise to difficulties, for example, for parabolic problems.

In this work coordinate splitting of the 3-rd and 4-th order were used for the two-dimensional hyperbolic problem of the linear elasticity. This made it possible to increase the final convergence order of the computational algorithm. The paper empirically estimates the convergence in L1 and L∞ norms using analytical solutions of the system with the sufficient degree of smoothness. To obtain objective results, we considered the cases of longitudinal and transverse plane waves propagating both along the diagonal of the computational cell and not along it. Numerical experiments demonstrated the improved accuracy and convergence order of constructed schemes. These improvements are achieved with the cost of three- or fourfold increase of the computational time (for the 3-rd and 4-th order respectively) and no additional memory requirements. The proposed improvement of the computational algorithm preserves the simplicity of its parallel implementation based on the spatial decomposition of the computational grid.

Mechanical properties of eukaryotic cells play an important role in life cycle conditions and in the development of pathological processes. In this paper we discuss the problem of parameters identification and verification of viscoelastic constitutive models based on force spectroscopy data of living cells. It is proposed to use one-dimensional continuous wavelet transform to calculate the relaxation function. Analytical calculations and the results of numerical simulation are given, which allow to obtain relaxation functions similar to each other on the basis of experimentally determined force curves and theoretical stress-strain relationships using wavelet differentiation algorithms. Test examples demonstrating correctness of software implementation of the proposed algorithms are analyzed. The cell models are considered, on the example of which the application of the proposed procedure of identification and verification of their parameters is demonstrated. Among them are a structural-mechanical model with parallel connected fractional elements, which is currently the most adequate in terms of compliance with atomic force microscopy data of a wide class of cells, and a new statistical-thermodynamic model, which is not inferior in descriptive capabilities to models with fractional derivatives, but has a clearer physical meaning. For the statistical-thermodynamic model, the procedure of its construction is described in detail, which includes the following. Introduction of a structural variable, the order parameter, to describe the orientation properties of the cell cytoskeleton. Setting and solving the statistical problem for the ensemble of actin filaments of a representative cell volume with respect to this variable. Establishment of the type of free energy depending on the order parameter, temperature and external load. It is also proposed to use an oriented-viscous-elastic body as a model of a representative element of the cell. Following the theory of linear thermodynamics, evolutionary equations describing the mechanical behavior of the representative volume of the cell are obtained, which satisfy the basic thermodynamic laws. The problem of optimizing the parameters of the statisticalthermodynamic model of the cell, which can be compared both with experimental data and with the results of simulations based on other mathematical models, is also posed and solved. The viscoelastic characteristics of cells are determined on the basis of comparison with literature data.