a two echelon sustainable supply chain coordination under cap and trade regulation this paper analyses the decision behaviour and coordination mechanisms for a two echelon sustainable supply chain under a cap and trade regulation in a make to order setting carbon emissions are generated primarily by the downstream manufacturing process and the market demand of the supply chain is affected by two decision variables the sustainability level and the selling price the impact of the unit emissions trading price on the optimal decision variables in both centralized and decentralized systems is revealed the comparison of decentralized and centralized systems shows that the increase in total profit in centralized system is at most 1 3 that in decentralized system to achieve the same profit as the centralized system we consider two contracts to coordinate the sustainable supply chain revenue sharing and two part tariff contracts by analysing the conditions for a win win outcome we prove that only the two part tariff contract can lead to perfect coordination finally sensitivity analysis of the key parameters is undertaken as part of a numerical example illustrating the theoretical results

cultural conflict and merger failure an experimental approach we use laboratory experiments to explore merger failure due to conflicting organizational cultures we introduce a laboratory paradigm for studying organizational culture that captures several key elements of the phenomenon in our experiments we allow subjects in firms to develop a culture and then merge two firms as expected performance decreases following the merging of two laboratory firms in addition subjects overestimate the performance of the merged firm and attribute the decrease in performance to members of the other firm rather than to situational difficulties created by conflicting culture

reverse channel design the case of competing retailers the economical and environmental benefits of product remanufacturing have been widely recognized in the literature and in practice in this paper we focus on the interaction between a manufacturers reverse channel choice to collect postconsumer goods and the strategic product pricing decisions in the forward channel when retailing is competitive to this end we model a direct product collection system in which the manufacturer collects used products directly from the consumers e g print and copy cartridges and an indirect product collection system in which the retailers act as product return points e g single use cameras cellular phones we first examine how the allocation of product collection to retailers impacts their strategic behavior in the product market and we discuss the economic trade offs the manufacturer faces while choosing an optimal reverse channel structure when a direct collection system is used channel profits are driven by the impact of scale of returns on collection effort whereas in the indirect reverse channel supply chain profits are driven by the competitive interaction between the retailers subsequently we show that the buy back payments transfered to the retailers for postconsumer goods provide a wholesale pricing flexibility that can be used to price discriminate between retailers of different profitability

sustainability in electrical and electronic equipment closed loop supply chains a system dynamics approach abstract in this paper we examine the impact of ecological motivation and technological innovations on the long term behavior of a closed loop supply chain with recycling activities ecological motivation manifests through legislation and green image factor whereas technological innovations manifest through design for environment we adopt system dynamics methodology applied to many environmental systems seeking long term gains the developed model is implemented to a real world supply chain of electrical equipment in greece numerical analysis illustrates the factors concerned like the delay of the legislation enforcement to achieve a sustainable future through non renewable resources and landfill preservation

determining the optimal return on investment for an advertising campaign abstract in this this paper we adopt the point of view that advertising is an investment and propose a simple formula for calculating the level of media spending which maximizes the return on investment the information which must be supplied for the calculation is commonly available and we express the optimal expenditure level in terms which are meaningful to media planners we show that when maximizing return on investment not all of the allocated media budget should be spent

the effects of market practices in oligopolistic markets an experimental examination of the ethyl case this study reports on the performance of experimental markets characterized by industrial structure and practices similar to those at issue in the ethyl case the central question is whether price competition is affected by the practices of advanced notification of price changes and most favored nation contracts or is determined by industrial organization and concentration alone

an analysis of optimal advertising under uncertainty we examine the firm s optimal advertising behavior under conditions of uncertainty for the static one period model we show that the firm s attitude toward risk may be responsible for the potential divergence between advertising decisions under uncertainty and those under deterministic conditions for the dynamic multi period model the ultimate impact of uncertainty on advertising is further complicated when the sales response function contains an unknown parameter and the firm wishes to gain more information about it through experimentation we demonstrate that whether it is optimal for the firm to experiment at an advertising rate higher equal to or lower than the myopic one period level would depend on the specification of the response function finally we offer some empirical evidence for our assumption of a quadratic sales response function using time series data of twelve major brands of cigarettes

intergroup conflict and intra group punishment in an experimental contest game we study how conflict in a contest game is influenced by rival parties being groups and by group members being able to punish each other our main motivation stems from the analysis of socio political conflict the relevant theoretical prediction in our setting is that conflict expenditures are independent of group size and independent of whether punishment is available or not we find first that our results contradict the independence of groupsize prediction conflict expenditures of groups are substantially larger than those of individuals and both are substantially above equilibrium towards the end of the experiment material losses in groups are 257 of the predicted level there is however substantial heterogeneity in the investment behaviour of individual group members second allowing group members to punish each other after individual contributions to the contest effort are revealed leads to even larger conflict expenditures now material losses are 869 of the equilibrium level and there is much less heterogeneity in individual group members investments these results contrast strongly with those from public goods experiments where punishment enhances efficiency and leads to higher material payoffs

exchange of cost information in oligopoly when do oligopolists gain by sharing their private information about their costs with one another what are the social welfare effects of such information exchange i study these questions by comparing the oligopolists expected profits under a cost sharing agreement with their expected profits in the bayesian equilibrium that would arise without cost sharing i also analyse the firms decisions to form a trade association to share their cost data under conditions of linear demand and cournot behaviour industrywide information exchange is the unique point in the core of the trade association membership game the exchange of cost data increases expected profits and welfare but reduces expected consumer surplus cost sharing increases efficiency by raising the market shares of lower cost firms and reducing the variability of aggregate output consumer surplus is diminished however because the variance of output is reduced and consumer surplus is a convex function of output

design of sustainable supply chains under the emission trading scheme increase in environmental concerns together with legislations are forcing industries to take a fresh look at the impact of their supply chain operations on the environment this paper introduces a mixed integer linear programming based framework for sustainable supply chain design that considers life cycle assessment lca principles in addition to the traditional material balance constraints at each node in the supply chain indeed the framework distinguishes between solid and liquid wastes as well as gaseous emissions due to various production processes and transportation systems the framework is used to evaluate the tradeoffs between economic and environmental objectives under various cost and operating strategies in the aluminum industry the results suggest that current legislation and emission trading schemes ets must be strengthened and harmonized at the global level in order to drive a meaningful environmental strategy moreover the model demonstrates that efficient carbon management strategies will help decision makers to achieve sustainability objectives in a cost effective manner

upstream pollution downstream waste disposal and the design of comprehensive environmental policies abstract many policymakers are shifting their focus from media specific pollution problems to product specific life cycle environmental problems in this paper we develop a model of production and consumption that incorporates life cycle externalities and use it to solve for alternative policies to achieve a social optimum in general we find that no single instrument can solve multiple problems contrary to what some observers have suggested however we find that there are alternative ways of reaching the social optimum we also discover that an integrated approach to policy appears to be important no matter what policy options are adopted and finally we find that there is only a limited role for so called product life cycle assessments

supplier selection order allocation a two stage multiple criteria dynamic programming approach this paper proposes a two stage multiple criteria dynamic programming approach for two of the most critical tasks in supply chain management namely supplier selection and order allocation in the first stage to address multiple decision criteria in supplier ranking the analytic hierarchy process ahp is employed in the second stage supplier ranks are fed into an order allocation model that aims at maximizing a utility function for the firm as well as minimizing the total supply chain costs subject to constraints on demand capacity and inventory levels a dynamic programming approach is crafted to solve the proposed bi objective model

analyzing structure of two echelon closed loop supply chain for pricing quality and recycling management abstract this paper analyzes the effects of recycling and product quality level on pricing decision in a two echelon closed loop supply chain clsc where demand is sensitive with price and quality level of the product under stackelberg game setting this paper considers three possible collection activities of used product for recycling viz retailer led collection manufacturer led collection and third party led collection it is found that third party s involvement in used product collection activity is always disadvantageous in this proposed model cost parameters of the reverse channel play an important role in determining best channel structure quality level and price of the product directly vary with recycling a threshold of collection effort determines which party between manufacturer and retailer can provide the best quality product at least price to resolve channel conflict and to distribute surplus profit the concepts of sub game perfect equilibrium and alternative offer bargaining strategy are used the analysis reveals that the subgame perfect equilibrium retail price cuts out channel conflict and depicts particular profit split irrespective of the offering party the proposed model is also justified by illustrating numerical examples

repeated price competition between individuals and between teams abstract we conducted an experimental study of price competition in a duopolistic market the market was operationalized as a repeated game between two teams with one two or three players in each team we found that asking and winning prices were significantly higher in competition between individuals than in competition between two or three person teams there were no general effects of team size but prices increased with time when each team member was paid his or her own asking price and decreased when the team s profits were divided equally this result is consistent with a simple model of individual learning

revenue sharing coordination in reverse logistics a reverse supply chain as a post consumption activity aims at extracting value from products at the end of their life cycle it could be comprised of reusing refurbishing remanufacturing and recycling activities in this paper we revisit the issue of revenue sharing in reverse supply chains to formulate the decision problems of coordinating parties manufacturer and retailer the coordination is formed in a dynamic setting where a feedback relationship exists between the return incentive policy of the retailer and the revenue sharing incentive strategy of the manufacturer to model this process we have adopted the use of a system dynamics sd approach sd is well suited for studying the behavior of complex systems over time and where internal feedbacks and delays exist we first identify pareto optimal solutions for individual players and from environmental perspectives of landfill diversion and carbon offset we then focus on revenue sharing as a widely practiced coordination scheme in reverse supply chains it resembles a leader follower stackelberg strategic decision making game with an equilibrium solution that yields lower performance for environmental criteria in this context we investigate if how a revenue sharing mechanism can be coordinated to achieve a higher environmental performance

partnerships as insurance devices theory and evidence we model partnerships as mutual insurance associations in which individuals band together to insure themselves against idiosyncratic shocks to their human capital as with most forms of insurance this generates a tradeoff between efficiency and risk sharing since partners keep only a fraction of the profits they generate they will supply less than optimal effort we show that in equilibrium participants in larger partnerships keep a smaller share of their own proceeds we test and confirm this prediction using a sample of partners in law firms

shared savings contracts for indirect materials in supply chains channel profits and environmental impacts there are many materials for which the quantity needed by a firm is at best indirectly related to the quantity of final product produced by that firm such as solvents in manufacturing processes or office supplies for any such indirect materials an inescapable incentive conflict exists the buyer wishes to minimize consumption of these indirect materials while the supplier s profits depend on increasing volume both buyer and supplier can exert effort to reduce consumption hence making the overall supply chain more efficient however no supplier will voluntarily participate unless contract terms are fundamentally revised this can be done through a variety of shared savings contracts where both parties profit from a consumption reduction this paper analyzes several such contracts currently in use for chemicals purchasing we show that such contracts can always increase supply chain profits but need not lead to reduced consumption we analyze equilibrium effort levels consumption and total profits and show how these change with the contract parameters we find that the goals of maximizing joint profits and minimizing consumption are generally not aligned also surprisingly a decrease in a cost parameter can lead to a decrease in profits it may be necessary but is always possible to renegotiate the shared savings contract to reap the benefits of a cost decrease

profit sharing and the role of professional partnerships when it is hard to assess service quality firms will suboptimally hire low ability workers we show that organizing as a profit sharing partnership can alleviate these problems our theory explains the relative scarcity of partnerships outside of professional service industries such as law accounting medicine investment banking architecture advertising and consulting it also sheds light on features of partnerships such as up or out promotion systems the use of noncompete clauses and recent trends in professional service industries

a game theory framework for cooperative management of refillable and disposable bottle lifecycles abstract firms engaged in industrial ecology hope to reduce environmental impacts and costs improve resource efficiency and create symbiotic relationships that reduce transaction costs and enhance information flow however current lca tools do not explain firms incentives to implement the principles of industrial ecology or how an individual or firm can affect the products and processes at other firms game theory on the other hand allows investigation of the willingness of producers and consumers to seek strategies that promote the common interest of the system while not harming their own interests this paper applies game theory to the lifecycle of bottle packaging and presents a framework for analysis of the choice between refillable and disposable bottles although refillable bottles may be more cost effective in the long run bottlers only have incentive to use refillable bottles when they are sure that consumer return rates will be reasonably high it has been found that consumers who keep or dispose of refillable bottles or respond to deposit refund return incentives by reducing their demand may drive costs up and encourage adoption of disposables a simple model is provided which finds the optimal bottler strategy as a function of the bottler s expectations for consumer cooperation

estimation uncertainty and optimal advertising decisions in this paper we develop a normative model that is built on an empirically relevant foundation we observe that decision makers among them advertisers rely on estimated relationships in reaching resource allocation decisions and we investigate the normative implications of this process in particular we explore the effects of uncertainty stemming from the use of sample estimates of population parameters in general we find that ignoring this estimation related uncertainty leads to suboptimal decisions

institutions and behavior experimental evidence on the effects of democracy a novel experiment is used to show that the effect of a policy on the level of cooperation is greater when it is chosen democratically by the subjects than when it is exogenously imposed in contrast to the previous literature our experimental design allows us to control for selection effects e g those who choose the policy may be affected differently by it our finding implies that democratic institutions may affect behavior directly in addition to having effects through the choice of policies our findings have implications for the generalizability of the results of randomized policy interventions

retail gasoline price cycles across spatially dispersed gasoline stations abstract studies of volatility in retail gasoline prices have used either weekly averages of the prices at a small subset of stations in a city or daily observations on prices at a small number of stations this paper uses daily observations on station specific prices within a large canadian metropolitan area to address whether weekly average prices or prices for a small number of stations provide an accurate description of pricing in a market with volatility this paper considers whether researchers using restricted data can draw meaningful conclusions about the appropriate theoretical model and the policy response to allegations of anticompetitive behavior

modeling of biomass to energy supply chain operations applications challenges and research directions reducing dependency on fossil fuels and mitigating their environmental impacts are among the most promising aspects of utilizing renewable energy sources the availability of various biomass resources has made it an appealing source of renewable energy given the variability of supply and sources of biomass supply chains play an important role in the efficient provisioning of biomass resources for energy production this paper provides a comprehensive review and classification of the excising literature in modeling of biomass supply chain operations while linking them to the wider strategic challenges and issues with the design planning and management of biomass supply chains on that basis we will present an analysis of the existing gaps and the potential future directions for research in modeling of biomass supply chain operations

communication and efficiency in competitive coordination games costless pre play communication has been found to effectively facilitate coordination and enhance efficiency in games with pareto ranked equilibria we report an experiment in which two groups compete in a weakest link contest by expending costly efforts allowing intra group communication leads to more aggressive competition and greater coordination than control treatments without any communication on the other hand allowing inter group communication leads to less destructive competition as a result intra group communication decreases while inter group communication increases payoffs our experiment thus provides an example of an environment where communication can either enhance or damage efficiency this contrasts sharply with experimental findings from public goods and other coordination games where communication always enhances efficiency and often leads to socially optimal outcomes

chapter 9 econometric and time series market response models publisher summary marketing has seen a rapid expansion in the widespread use of quantitative methods correlation and regression analysis were among the first techniques used as marketing research emerged as a discipline after world war ii in the early 1970s regression analysis became econometrics simultaneous equation systems could be estimated almost as easily as single regression equations while econometrics as a whole continues to flourish as new and more sophisticated estimation techniques and associated computer software have become available simultaneous equation systems have not become widely prevalent the dynamic structure of marketing variables themselves is addressed in the chapter followed by discussions of leads and lags among marketing variables and the assessment of the direction of causality dynamic properties of sales response functions have been discussed in more detail marketing generalizations that have been uncovered as well as empirical evidence on the shape of the sales response function is reported

the marketing mix decision under uncertainty this paper develops a marketing mix model under uncertainty using the capital asset pricing model capm valuation framework the model is general because it treats price advertising and personal selling simultaneously and allows for general patterns of uncertainty because the manager often lacks precise quantitative information about the sales response function the analysis focuses on the qualitative properties of the model the methodology of comparative statics is used to determine how the marketing mix should be modified when market conditions change specifically the comparative statics are shown to depend on how advertising and personal selling influence price sensitivity the interaction between advertising and personal selling and the relationship between sales and the return earned in the capital markets the comparative statics for risk depend in addition on the precise mathematical form with which uncertainty enters the random demand function i e additive multiplicative or generalize

an exploratory game theoretic analysis of biomass electricity generation supply chain this study proposes a game theoretic approach to model and analyze the process of utilizing biomass for power generation considering three players distributor facility developer and participating farmer we characterize the nash equilibrium of the sequential game and discuss its features a special attention is devoted to the analysis of the impact of incentives and initial target on the equilibrium in which the biomass is part of electricity production

internal conflict market uniformity and transparency in price competition between teams abstract the way profits are divided within successful teams imposes different degrees of internal conflict we experimentally examine how the level of internal conflict and whether such conflict is transparent to other teams affects teams ability to compete vis a vis each other and consequently market outcomes participants took part in a repeated bertrand duopoly game between three player teams which had either the same or different levels of internal conflict uniform vs mixed profit division was either private pay high conflict each member received her own asking price or equal pay low conflict profits were divided equally we find that internal conflict leads to tacit coordination on high prices in uniform private pay duopolies but places private pay teams at a competitive disadvantage in mixed duopolies competition is softened by transparency in uniform markets but intensified in mixed markets we propose an explanation of the results and discuss implications for managers and policy makers d43 l22 c92

communication in intergroup conflicts abstract numerous studies suggest that communication may be a universal means to mitigate collective action problems in this study we challenge this view and show that the communication structure crucially determines whether communication mitigates or intensifies rent seeking for pure public goods we observe the effect of different communication structures in the context of a finitely repeated intergroup contest and demonstrate that conflict expenditures are significantly higher if communication is restricted to one s own group as compared to a situation with no communication however expenditures are significantly lower if open communication within one s own group and between rivaling groups is allowed we show that under open communication intergroup conflicts are avoided by groups taking turns in winning the contest our results do not only qualify the role of communication for collective action but may also provide insights on how to mitigate the destructive nature of intergroup conflict and group rent seeking

risk sharing and group decision making in a decision making problem where a group will receive an uncertain payoff which must be divided among the members of the group the ultimate payoff of interest is the vector of individual payoffs received by the members of the group in this paper preferences are quantified in terms of cardinal utility functions for such vectors of payoffs these utility functions can represent preferences concerning equitable and inequitable vectors of payoffs as well as attitudes toward risk the individual utility functions are aggregated to form a group utility function for the vector of payoffs and this latter function is in turn used to generate a group utility function for the overall group payoff and a sharing rule for dividing the group payoff into individual payoffs the resulting group decisions are pareto optimal in utility space properties of the sharing rule and the group utility function are investigated for additive and multilinear group utility functions

manufacturer s revenue sharing contract and retail competition this paper investigates a revenue sharing contract for coordinating a supply chain comprising one manufacturer and two competing retailers the manufacturer as a stackelberg leader offers a revenue sharing contract to two competing retailers who face stochastic demand before the selling season under the offered contract terms the competing retailers are to determine the quantities to be ordered from the manufacturer prior to the season and the retail price at which to sell the items during the season the process of pricing and ordering is expected to result in an equilibrium as in the bayesian nash game on the basis of anticipated responses and actions of the retailers the manufacturer designs the revenue sharing contract adopting the classic newsvendor problem model framework and using numerical methods the study finds that the provision of revenue sharing in the contract can obtain better performance than a price only contract however the benefits earned under the revenue sharing contract by different supply chain partners differ because of the impact of demand variability and price sensitivity factors the paper also analyses the impact of demand variability on decisions about optimal retail price order quantity and profit sharing between the manufacturer and the retailers lastly it investigates how the competition between retailers factor influences the decision making of supply chain members in response to uncertain demand and profit variability