Patent ID: 8600847

Claim:
A method comprising: in an economic relationship between a first party and a plurality of second parties in connection with provision of at least one of goods and services for a fee, estimating costs incurred by said first party in connection with a loss of at least some of said second parties to said relationship, wherein the costs incurred by said first party are not identical for each loss of said second parties; estimating a response curve of second party loss probability versus fee; determining an optimal value of a modification to said fee, such that profits of said first party are maximized, taking into account said costs incurred by said first party in connection with said loss of said at least some of said second parties and said response curve of said second party loss probability versus said fee; and determining at least one action to take in response to said determining of said optimal value; providing a system, said system comprising distinct software modules stored in a non-transitory manner on at least one computer-readable storage medium, said modules comprising a second party loss cost estimation module, a response curve estimation module, and an optimization module; wherein: said estimating of said costs incurred by said first party is carried out by said second party loss cost estimation module executing on at least one hardware processor; said estimating of said response curve is carried out by said response curve estimation module executing on said at least one hardware processor; said determining of said optimal value is carried out by said optimization module executing on said at least one hardware processor; and said determining of said at least one action to take is carried out by said optimization module executing on said at least one hardware processor.