joint pricing and ordering policy for two echelon imperfect production inventory model with two cycles abstract this study deals with an imperfect epq economic production quantity price dependent inventory model over two types of cycles in the first cycle the retailer sells only good product with actual price and in the second he sells the products with a discount price in the production run time the non conforming items are produced at a random rate and they are reworked after the regular production run time and the reworked items are almost perfect as good as original quality items the retailer starts the second cycle when a certain percent of good items are left to him after the completion of regular production the retailer continues simultaneously two cycles up to which both types of the products are available to him now our objective is to find out optimal ordering lot size and optimal price for which the profit of the integrated model is maximum also we check the best strategy of retailer for the time of starting second cycle a numerical example is provided to illustrate the behavior and application of the model

voting with their money brexit and outward investment by uk firms abstract we study the impact of the 2016 brexit referendum on uk foreign direct investment using the synthetic control method to construct appropriate counterfactuals we show that by march 2019 the leave vote had led to a 17 increase in the number of uk outward investment transactions in the remaining eu27 member states whereas transactions in non eu oecd countries were unaffected these results support the hypothesis that uk companies have been setting up european subsidiaries to retain access to the eu market after brexit at the same time we find that the number of eu27 investment projects in the uk has declined by around 9 illustrating that being a smaller economy than the eu leaves the uk more exposed to the costs of economic disintegration

capacity allocation ordering and pricing decisions in a supply chain with demand and supply uncertainties abstract this paper studies coordinated decisions in a decentralized supply chain that consists of one original equipment manufacturer oem one manufacturer and one distributor and possesses uncertainties at both demand and supply sides these uncertainties emerge respectively from random demand the distributor faces and randomness of capacity with which the oem processes the manufacturer s outsourced quantity sharing supply and demand uncertainty information along the supply chain enables us to develop three models with different coordination efforts the oem and manufacturer coordination the manufacturer and distributor coordination and the oem manufacturer and distributor coordination and quantify the coordinated decisions in these three models our analysis of these coordination models suggests that coordinating with the oem improves the manufacturer s probability of meeting downstream demand and his expected profit yet coordinating with the manufacturer is not necessarily beneficial to the oem when downstream coordination is lacking

reply on comments on a quantity discount pricing model to increase vendor profits professor joglekar is to be thanked for his generally insightful comments 1988 concerning my paper monahan monahan j p 1984 a quantity discount pricing model to increase vendor points management sci 306 june 720 726 he has in my view correctly assessed the limitations of two important production assumptions i made assumptions which need to be rethought in any quantity discount pricing models of the future yet although i find myself in general agreement with joglekar s comments i wish to clarify some points concerning the model and its potential applicability

note comment on a generalized quantity discount pricing model to increase supplier s profits lee and rosenblatt lee h l m j rosenblatt 1986 a generalized quantity discount pricing model to increase supplier s profits management sci 32 9 1177 1185 considered the joint problem of ordering and offering discount by a supplier to his sole buyer the objective of the supplier being to induce the buyer to alter his order quantities in order to increase the supplier s yearly profit they determined the optimal ordering and pricing policy for the supplier under the constraint on the amount of discount offered to the purchaser this restriction on the amount of price discount seems unreasonable when the objective of the supplier in all likelihood is to increase his own profits it is possible that higher discounts in purchase price may lead to greater economies for the supplier in this note a much simpler approach is being offered for determining the optimal ordering and pricing policy for the supplier

a generalized quantity discount pricing model to increase supplier s profits in this paper the joint problem of ordering and offering price discount by a supplier to his sole major buyer is analyzed the objective is to induce the buyer to alter his order schedule and size so that the supplier can benefit from lower set up ordering and inventory holding costs we generalize the quantity discount pricing model of monahan monahan j p 1984 a quantity discount pricing model to increase vendor profits management sci 30 6 720 726 to 1 explicitly incorporate constraints imposed on the amount of discount that can be offered and 2 relax the implicit assumption of a lot for lot or order for order policy adopted by the supplier an algorithm is developed to solve the supplier s joint ordering and price discount problem

managing channel profits a channel of distribution consists of different channel members each having his own decision variables however each channel member s decisions do affect the other channel members profits and as a consequence actions a lack of coordination of these decisions can lead to undesirable consequences for example in the simple manufacturer retailer consumer channel uncoordinated and independent channel members decisions over margins result in a higher price paid by the consumer than if those decisions were coordinated in addition the ensuing suboptimal volume leads to lower profits for both the manufacturer and the retailer this paper explores the problems inherent in channel coordination we address the following questions what is the effect of channel coordination what causes a lack of coordination in the channel how difficult is it to achieve channel coordination what mechanisms exist which can achieve channel coordination what are the strengths and weaknesses of these mechanism what is the role of nonprice variables e g manufacturer advertising retailer shelf space in coordination does the lack of coordination affect normative implications from in store experimentation can quantity discounts be a coordination mechanism are some marketing practices actually disguised quantity discounts we review the literature and present a simple formulation illustrating the roots of the coordination problem we then derive the form of the quantity discount schedule that results in optimum channel profits this article was originally published in marketing science volume 2 issue 3 pages 239 272 in 1983

integrated pricing and lot sizing decision in a two echelon supply chain with a finite production rate abstract in this paper we consider a supply chain consisting of a supplier and a retailer selling the product manufactured by the supplier in a market in which the demand for the product is decreasing in the price set by the retailer previous research on coordinating the supply chain with price sensitive demand often assumes that either the supplier purchases the product or the supplier has an infinitely large production rate we consider explicitly the supplier s finite production rate in the pricing and lot sizing decision which causes the problem much more challenging we first investigate the optimization problem in the decentralized scenario to find the optimal order quantity and selling price for the retailer as well as the optimal wholesale price and lot size multiplier for the supplier we then solve the joint optimization problem in the centralized supply chain to find the optimal order quantity the selling price and the optimal lot size multiplier we provide two sequential algorithms to solve the joint optimization problem computational experiments show that the algorithms are effective all 448 tested problems are solved optimally and efficient it only takes a few iterations to converge for each tested problem the supply chain coordination mechanism is then designed through an all unit quantity discount policy and a franchise fee

the relationship between unemployment and vacancies in australia the paper addresses the existence of an equilibrium unemployment vacancies uv relationship in australia cointegration test results suggest that no bivariate long run uv relationship exists moreover this finding fails to support the basic model of labour job search however a modified beveridge curve is proposed where it is found that a number of trivariate equilibrium relationships exist between unemployment vacancies and one other variable the replacement ratio the proportion of long term unemployed or the real wage the existence of an equilibrium relationship in the multivariate framework is due to the endogenous modelling of the un employment flows which are assumed to be exogenous in the bivariate framework of the beveridge curve

on modeling the advertising operations interface under asymmetric competition abstract using a market share attraction structure of advertising competition and following a supermodular game approach this article demonstrates for an asymmetric oligopoly the directional impact of changes in model parameters on the marketing controlled variables of all rivals advertising budgets and the operations controlled variables of all rivals ordered quantities importantly the various changes are examined analytically empirically and numerically in both non dominated and dominated asymmetric oligopolies in this regard the results indicate that firms in a dominated oligopoly one firm of market share larger than or equal to 50 behave differently compared to firms in a non dominated oligopoly each firm of market share less than 50 in response to changes in model parameters furthermore changes in model parameters are investigated in terms of their relative influential impact on a variety of equilibrium measures in this regard the findings indicate that for the analyzed model the marketing parameters exert much more influence on the equilibrium measures than the operations parameters additionally a change in the mode of competition from non cooperation oligopoly to cooperation joint ownership dictates that strong asymmetric firms of favorable marketing and operations parameters continue advertising but at lower levels and weak asymmetric firms of less favorable parameters cease advertising altogether

an approach for developing an optimal discount pricing policy this paper addresses the problem of why and how a seller should develop a discount pricing structure even if such a pricing structure does not alter ultimate demand the situation modeled is most appropriate where the seller s product does not represent a major component of the buyer s final product where the demand for the product is derived or where the price is only one of many factors considered in making a purchase decision a model of buyer reaction to any given pricing scheme is developed to show that there exists a unified pricing policy which motivates the buyer to increase its ordering quantity per order thereby reducing the joint buyer and seller ordering and holding costs as a result the seller is able to reduce its costs while leaving the buyer no worse off and often better off the model is extended to handle variable ordering and shipping costs and situations where the seller faces numerous groups of buyers each having different ordering policies finally a case study is presented explicitly showing how the proposed pricing policy can be applied to the situation of a large seller selling to a number of different buyer groups

consumption inequality and family labor supply we examine the link between wage and consumption inequality using a life cycle model incorporating consumption and family labor supply decisions we derive analytical expressions for the dynamics of consumption hours and earnings of two earners in the presence of correlated wage shocks nonseparability progressive taxation and asset accumulation the model is estimated using panel data for hours earnings assets and consumption we focus on family labor supply as an insurance mechanism and find strong evidence of smoothing of permanent wage shocks once family labor supply assets and taxes are properly accounted for there is little evidence of additional insurance jel d12 d14 d91 j22 j31

coalition formation problem for sourcing contract design in supply networks abstract this article studies a coalition formation problem for cooperative replenishment with a single supplier and multiple firms we consider that a vertical cooperation between the supplier and the set of firms is already set using periodic individual contracts and we investigate the profitability of a horizontal cooperation between firms when designing collaborative contracts given the significant savings that can be realized thanks to horizontal collaboration the main interest of the potential collaborating firms is to figure out how the collaborating group should be formed and how stable alliances and coalitions should be generated in this article the two questions are studied in two business situations focusing either on the collaboration opportunities in the ordering or the transportation process in each collaborative situation a decision making approach is applied to assess the expected profitability of each firm and to determine if firms should form coalitions to maximize their profits an exact solution method based on a game theoretic approach is developed called cooperative replenishment algorithm cra which generates core stable coalitions for cost savings regarding all partner standpoints an analytical study of stability conditions regarding the ordering and transportation cost structures were performed to enhance the cra resolution procedure extensive experiments based on realistic instances are provided to validate the performance of the cra proposed in terms of solution stability and convergence the computational results also confirm the potential benefit of horizontal collaboration between firms in terms of profit maximization compared to the stand alone situation

quasi fixed inputs in u s and japanese manufacturing a generalized leontief restricted cost function approach in this paper a generalized leontief variable cost function is develope d which permits analytical derivation of steady state levels of quasi fixed inputs and capacity output and does not require specification of a numeraire input this framework is then used to evaluate the fa ctor demand patterns of japanese and u s manufacturing based on bot h one quasi fixed capital input and two quasi fixed capital and la bor input specifications and both static and dynamic optimization t he findings provide evidence of considerable flexibility of demand re sponses in japan which may have contributed to japan s relatively st rong economic performance in the volatile 1970s copyright 1988 by mit press

brands in motion how frictions shape multinational production following the 2016 leave vote in the referendum on uk membership in the eu and the election of donald trump trade agreements have entered a period of great instability to predict the impact of possible disruptions to existing arrangements requires counterfactual analysis that takes into account the complex set of factors influencing the production and marketing strategies of multinational corporations we estimate a model of multinational decision making in the car industry this model predicts the production reallocation and consumer surplus consequences of changes in tariffs and non tariff barriers induced by nafta termination brexit trans pacific and trans atlantic integration agreements

note comments on a quantity discount pricing model to increase vendor profits monahan monahan j p 1984 a quantity discount pricing model to increase vendor profits management sci june 720 726 adapted the quantity discount model of inventory theory to the problem of determining an optimal quantity discount schedule from a vendor s point of view and opened up an important direction of research however his one item one customer one vendor model is based on several implicit assumptions that must be judged unreasonable monahan must account for the vendor s inventory carrying charges and redefine his variable s2 it is shown that a rational vendor s manufacturing frequency would not be identical to the buyer s ordering frequency if the vendor s manufacturing setup costs are substantially larger than the buyer s ordering costs a numerical example presented in this note also questions the practical usefulness of monahan s model even after its theoretical inaccuracies axe corrected monahan s model may explain discounts that are a fraction of 1 of the price of an item but it fails to explain commonly observed magnitudes of quantity discounts such as 10 of the unit price

optimal ordering policies in response to a discount offer abstract sometimes supplier offers a temporary price discount to increase cash flow or decrease the inventory level of certain items thus the manufacturer may be able to improve the effectiveness of his inventory system by ordering a special quantity at this sale period in this paper economic order quantity eoq models with a discounted price are developed to obtain the optimal ordering policy during the sale period for five different cases a coincidence of sale period with replenishment time b non coincidence of sale period with replenishment time c sale period is longer than a cycle d discounted price as a function of the special ordering quantity and e incremental discount each case has its own characteristics of the sale period and the discounted price the objective is to take the maximum possible advantage from the discounted price by ordering a special quantity during the sale period the optimal ordering policy is obtained by maximizing the difference between the two costs regular eoq cost and special quantity cost during the sale period moreover a comparison of different discount scenarios is developed to sense the effect of different parameters on the ordering policies the annual gain obtained is linearly related to the discount and the on hand remnant inventory numerical analyses are provided to illustrate and testify the values of the optimal special quantity the analysis showed an impressive improvement in the effectiveness of the inventory system when a special order is placed during the sale period the optimal special quantity is driven for each case to visualize real life problems sensitivity analysis is also initiated to study the change in the total savings with respect to the variation of the special optimal quantity

macroeconomic adjustment and poverty in selected industrial countries the business cycle affects the incidence of poverty as shown by evidence from australia sweden the united kingdom and the united states many of the poor in these countries are outside the labor markets and transfers are a major source of income for many others but the unemployment and wage reductions that occur in recession increase the incidence of poverty major causes of poverty are unemployment in australia and the united kingdom and low wages in the united states similar cyclical effects are observed in sweden but a vast transfer program virtually eliminates poverty there are several policy options for combating poverty caused by recession a combination of unemployment insurance for a limited period followed by a job guarantee is the most effective policy toward unemployment whereas poverty caused by low earnings can be remedied by redistribution through the tax system

coordination mechanisms of supply chain systems supply chain management scm has become an important management paradigm as supply chain members are often separate and independent economic entities a key issue in scm is to develop mechanisms that can align their objectives and coordinate their activities so as to optimize system performance in this paper we provide a review of coordination mechanisms of supply chain systems in a framework that is based on supply chain decision structure and nature of demand this framework highlights the behavioral aspects and information need in the coordination of a supply chain the identification of these issues points out several directions of future research in this area

discount pricing decisions in distribution channels with price sensitive demand abstract in this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of quantity discounts and volume discounts as coordination mechanisms in distribution channels with demand that is price sensitive we consider a single vendor single retailer distribution channel demand for the product arises only at the retailer the demand faced by the retailer is assumed to be deterministic but price elastic the retailer in turn buys the product from the vendor the vendor and the retailer act independently and rationally each maximizing their own respective profit the equilibrium point that specifies the vendor s and buyer s inventory and pricing policy is determined by the solution to a stackelberg game we consider the cases when quantity discount and volume discount respectively are offered we develop methods to determine the optimal discount policy for these cases we then consider the case where both volume and quantity discounts are offered simultaneously and develop a method to determine the optimal simultaneous discount offer the relative performance of the alternative discount schemes is then evaluated through a numerical study the results of the study demonstrate that the effectiveness of volume discount as a coordination mechanism is higher when the sensitivity of demand to price changes is higher the effectiveness of quantity discount on the other hand is higher with lower price sensitivity of demand finally the results also demonstrate that perfect coordination is achieved when volume and quantity discounts are offered simultaneously

pre season stocking and pricing decisions for fashion retailers with multiple information updating abstract motivated by the industrial practice we investigate in this paper the pre season inventory and pricing decisions for fashion retailers before the selling season a retailer can place orders for a seasonal fashion product from her supplier at two distinct stages via two different delivery modes market information from the sales of a pre seasonal product is collected and used to update the demand forecast of the seasonal product at the succeeding stages by using bayesian approach we formulate a dynamic optimization problem and obtain the optimal stocking policy after the ordered seasonal product has arrived and just before the start of the selling season the retailer can determine the optimal selling price of the product with respect to the latest demand information and the amount of product on hand we study the pricing policy under different objectives sensitivity analysis is carried out and the features of the policies are revealed managerial insights are generated

revisiting foundations in lot sizing connections between harris crowther monahan and clark abstract while many review articles exist on deterministic lot sizing models used in the context of price and quantity discounts buyer vendor coordination supply chain management and joint economic lot sizing problems they do not convey the impact of important findings which date back to at least 2002 or in hindsight to 1984 as a result many recent articles still model the financial implications of lot sizing decisions without having the assurance that these models would help the firm s involved in maximising the net present value npv this paper therefore reviews these findings while adding also its own contributions as to convey the general importance to lot sizing theory we show that the underlying principles used in the four key articles that have led to a division in modelling approaches are in fact all in line with npv and argue that therefore there should not be these discrepancies that currently persist in the literature we establish the connections between these four strands of the literature using the solution to a simple variation of harris eoq model deriving thereby results from boyaci and gallego 2002 and beullens and janssens 2011 but showing their general applicability to any type of supply chain structure the breath of implications to deterministic lot sizing theory is illustrated using practical examples we present a stochastic version of the model of crowther 1964 which is arguably the least understood and applied model but on the other hand the most important one in realising how these modelling strands can be unified

a joint optimal pricing rebate value and lot sizing model delayed incentives in the form of mail in cash rebates are very popular among manufacturers and more recently among retailers one of the main advantages of rebates is that while they increase demand a small proportion of consumers redeem them in this paper we formulate and solve models for jointly determining the optimal price rebate face value and the optimal order quantity for a price and rebate sensitive deterministic demand the models show that under realistic conditions offering rebates can have significant pricing and inventory policy implications and can lead to a significant increase in profit

joint dynamic pricing and lot sizing under competition abstract we study the joint dynamic pricing and lot sizing problem when firms operate in a competitive environment bearing in mind that a dynamic pricing strategy is successful when customers understand it we assume each firm selects prices from a discrete set the problem corresponds to a bertrand model so the pricing strategies of the firms should constitute a nash equilibrium given the combinatorial nature of the decisions computing the equilibrium in a tractable time may not be feasible for larger instances in order to compute the equilibrium efficiently we propose a framework consisting of solving iteratively mixed integer programming formulations the framework reduces the complexity of the problem by using the fact that pricing and inventory planning remain stable to marginal variations in competitors prices

a stackelberg game and its improvement in a vmi system with a manufacturing vendor vendor managed inventory vmi is an inventory management strategy to let a vendor manage his retailers inventories which makes the vendor have the opportunity to obtain some inventory and market related information of his retailers this paper discusses how the vendor can take advantage of this information for increasing his own profit by using a stackelberg game in a vmi system the vendor here is a manufacturer who procures raw materials to produce a finished product and supplies it at the same wholesale price to multiple retailers the retailers then sell the product in independent markets at retail prices solution procedures are developed to find the stackelberg game equilibrium that each enterprise is not willing to deviate from for maximizing his own profit the equilibrium makes the manufacturer benefited and the retailers profits maximized the equilibrium can then be improved for further benefiting the manufacturer and his retailers if the retailers are willing to cooperate with the manufacturer by using a cooperative contract finally a numerical example and the corresponding sensitivity analysis are given to illustrate that 1 the manufacturer can benefit from his leadership and monopolize the added profit of the vmi system in some cases 2 the manufacturer can further improve his own profit and then the retailers profits by the cooperative contract as compared to the stackelberg equilibrium 3 market and raw material related parameters have significant influence on every enterprise s net profit

the cyclical nature of markups in canadian manufacturing a production theory approach in this paper the effects of cost and demand characteristics on the magnitude and cyclical behaviour of markups in canadian manufacturing are measured within a production theory framework price to marginal cost ratios for various manufacturing industries are computed and the impact art their secular and cyclical trends from changes in capacity utilization scale economies variable input prices import competition unemployment and other exogenous market and technological determinants are explored using adjusted markup indexes and elasticities the measured price margins seem weakly procyclical further evaluation of the determinants of these cycles suggests that the procyclical nature of markups is primarily related to exogenous factors affecting costs such as energy price shocks and that cost characteristics underlying scale economies provide a countercyclical influence that counteracts the profitability arising from markups

real wages and unemployment in australia this paper estimates a three equation model of the australian labor market for employment real wages and the participation rate it uses the model to study the role of incomes policies in containing real wage growth and the reasons behind the changes in unemployment since 1970 it finds that incomes policies have not been important in controlling real wages the rise in unemployment in the 1970s was due to the rise in tax rates and unemployment benefits and the changes in unemployment in the 1980s were connected with changes in investment and aggregate demand copyright 1991 by the london school of economics and political science

coordinating ordering and pricing decisions in a two stage distribution system with price sensitive demand through short term discounting abstract we consider a short term discounting model in which the distributor offers a discounted price for the retailers orders placed at the beginning of its replenishment cycle in a non cooperative distribution system with one distributor and multiple retailers each facing price sensitive demand we examine the value of the price discount strategy as a mechanism for the distributor to coordinate the retailers ordering and pricing decisions under two common types of demand linear demand in price and constant elasticity demand in price our numerical study reveals that in the presence of homogeneous retailers namely retailers with identical demand rates the distributor s profit improvement due to coordination generally decreases as the number of retailers or the inventory holding cost rate increases but increases as price elasticity increases although an increase in the inventory holding cost rate has a negative effect on the distributor s profit it may have a positive effect on the retailers profits we further find that with heterogeneous retailers namely retailers with different demand rates offering a discounted price under linear demand benefits the distributor when both the inventory holding cost rate and the variation in demand are either small or large this cross effect however is absent under constant elasticity demand

modeling quantity discounts under general price sensitive demand functions optimal policies and relationships this paper presents models for determining optimal all unit and incremental quantity discount policies and investigates the effect of quantity discounts on increasing demand and ensuring pareto efficient transactions under general price sensitive demand functions the paper develops optimal quantity discount policies investigates their interrelationships and their benefits to both the supplier and the buyer and gains managerial insights for the scenarios of maximizing the supplier s profit and the joint profit we develop simple and efficient solution approaches for determining the all unit and the incremental optimal decision policies for general price sensitive demand functions we have three main findings first with price sensitive demand there are two incentives in offering quantity discounts increasing demand and ensuring pareto efficient transactions in most cases increasing demand dominates in justifying the offering of quantity discounts second using a single lot size associated with all efficient transactions as with the constant demand case does not hold with the price sensitive demand case third the optimal all unit quantity discount policy is equivalent to the optimal incremental quantity discount policy in benefiting both the supplier and the buyer

stability and chaos in demand based pricing under social interactions abstract demand based pricing is often used to moderate demand fluctuations so as to level resource utilization and increase profitability however such pricing policies may not be effective when customers purchase decisions are influenced by social interactions this paper investigates the demand dynamics under a demand based pricing policy of a frequently purchased service when social interactions are at work customers are heterogeneous and adaptively forward looking existing customers re purchase decisions are based on adaptively formed price expectations and reservation prices potential customers are attracted through social interactions with existing customers the demand process is characterized by a two dimensional dynamical system it is shown that the equilibrium demand can be unstable for a given reservation price distribution we first analyze the stability of the equilibrium demand under various scenarios of social interactions and customers adaptively forward looking behavior and then characterize their dynamics using the bifurcation plots lyapunov exponents and return maps the results indicate that the demand process can be stable periodic or chaotic the study shows that the intended effect of a demand based pricing policy may be offset by customers adaptively forward looking behavior under the influence of social interactions in fact the interplay of these factors may even lead to chaotic demand dynamics the result highlights the complex dynamics produced by a simple demand price mechanism under social interactions for a demand based pricing strategy to be effective companies must take social interactions into account

non cooperative strategies for production and shipment lot sizing in one vendor multi buyer system abstract this paper considers a decentralized dynamic production distribution control a discrete deterministic model in which a vendor produces a product and supplies it to the buyer is considered several papers on vendor buyer integrated production inventory management assume that policies are set by a central decision maker to optimize total system performance although vendor and buyer may agree to minimize the total cost at least one of them has a private incentive to deviate from the agreement in the competitive situation the objective is to determine schedules which minimize the individual average total cost of production shipment and stockholding we assume that the division of shipment costs is centrally coordinated or negotiated initially it leads to a class of non cooperative constrained games indexed by two parameters connected with partitions of shipment costs non cooperative strategies are considered as feasible strategies in a restricted non cooperative game some properties of equilibrium strategies are investigated as acceptable equilibrium strategies of subgames in the game

the relation between price and marginal cost in u s industry an examination of data on output and labor input reveals that some u s industries have marginal cost well below price the conclusion rests on the finding that cyclical variations in labor input are small compared with variations in output in booms firms produce substantially more output and sell it for a price that exceeds the costs of the added inputs the paper documents the disparity between price and marginal cost where marginal cost is estimated from annual variations in cost it considers a variety of explanations of the findings that are consistent with competition but none is found to be completely plausible

quantity discounts managerial issues and research opportunities marketing managers frequently administer pricing policies involving substantial quantity discounts however our understanding of the precise role of these discounts and their design is quite limited this paper reviews and integrates the economics and marketing literature and presents a detailed analysis of the policies of four firms in order to i specify the variety of motivations for quantity discounts ii provide guidelines to managers in designing quantity discount schedules and iii set out the most fruitful directions for future research

a stochastic and asymmetric information framework for a dominant manufacturer supply chain abstract consider a dominant manufacturer wholesaling a product to a retailer who in turn retails it to the consumers at p unit the retail market demand volume varies with p according to a given demand curve this basic system is commonly modeled as a manufacturer stackelberg ms game under a deterministic and symmetric information det sym i framework we first explain the logical flaws of this framework which are i the dominant manufacturer leader will have a lower profit than the retailer under an iso elastic demand curve ii in some situations the system s correct solution can be hyper sensitive to minute changes in the demand curve iii applying volume discounting while keeping the original ms profit maximizing objective leads to an implausible degenerate solution in which the manufacturer has dictatorial power over the channel we then present an extension of the stochastic and asymmetric information sto asy i framework proposed in lau and lau lau a lau h s 2005 some two echelon supply chain games improving from deterministic symmetric information to stochastic asymmetric information models european journal of operational research 161 1 203 223 coupled with the notion that a profit maximizing dominant manufacturer may implement not only ms but also pm i e using a manufacturer imposed maximum retail price we show that this new framework resolves all the logical flaws stated above along the way we also present a procedure for the dominant manufacturer to design a profit maximizing volume discount scheme using stochastic and asymmetric demand information using our sto asy i framework to resolve the logical flaws of the det sym i framework also reveals two noteworthy points i the attractiveness of the perfectly legal but overlooked channel coordination mechanism pm and ii volume discounting as a means for the dominant manufacturer to benefit from information known only to the retailer

inventory decisions for emergency supplies based on hurricane count predictions abstract this paper addresses a stochastic inventory control problem for manufacturing and retail firms who face challenging procurement and production decisions associated with hurricane seasons specifically the paper presents a control policy in which stocking decisions are based on a hurricane forecast model that predicts the number of landfall hurricanes for an ensuing hurricane season the multi period inventory control problem is formulated as a stochastic programming model with recourse where demand during each pre hurricane season period is represented as a convolution of the current period s demand and an updated estimate of demand for the ensuing hurricane season due to the computational challenges associated with solving stochastic programming problems recent scenario reduction techniques are discussed and illustrated through an example problem the proposed model specifies cost minimizing inventory strategies for simultaneously meeting stochastic demands that occur prior to the hurricane season while proactively preparing for potential demand surge during the season

multi buyer discount pricing abstract this article gives an exact optimal solution to the problem of finding the optimal discount price and price break quantity for a seller dealing with one buyer it also gives a method for solving the problem when one seller offers a single quantity discount schedule to many buyers the discount is of the all quantity type and the model of the cost structure was originally proposed by crowther

trade liberalization and the skill premium a local labor markets approach trade economists have long studied the effects of globalization on wage differences between workers with different levels of skill or education 1 this literature has generally sought to link globalization to changes in the economy wide skill premium attanasio goldberg and pavcnik 2004 and gonzaga menezes filho and terra 2006 are salient examples that investigate whether changes in sector specific prices or tariffs changes in skill composition within and across sectors and movements in the skill premium are consistent with the predictions of workhorse trade models such as the heckscherohlin model however there is little evidence directly establishing a causal effect of globalization on the skill premium 2 more recently a growing body of research has focused on trade s differential effects across local markets within a country 3 in this paper we combine these two strands of literature by developing a theoretically consistent approach to studying the causal

pricing and volume discounting for a dominant retailer with uncertain manufacturing cost information abstract a product costs the manufacturer c unit to produce the retailer sells it at p unit to the consumers the retail market demand volume v varies with p according to a given demand curve d p how would or should the players i e the manufacturer and the retailer set their prices in contrast to many studies that assume a dominant manufacturer implementing the manufacturer stackelberg ms game this paper examines how a dominant retailer should operate when his knowledge of c is imperfect we first derive optimal decisions some of them counter intuitive for the dominant retailer when he is restricted to choosing between rs retailer stackelberg and ms second we propose a reverse quantity discount scheme that the dominant retailer i e the downstream player can offer to the manufacturer note that the standard discount scheme is offered by the upstream player we show that this discounting scheme is quite effective compared to the considerably more complicated though nevertheless theoretically optimal menu of contracts we also reveal a largely overlooked function of discounting i e discounting enables an ignorant but dominant player to usurp the earnings attributable to the knowledge of the dominated player finally we also show that discounting works well when the demand curve is linear but becomes ineffective when the demand curve is iso elastic a result echoing the conclusions of some earlier related works

the cyclical behavior of marginal cost and price the author examines the cyclical behavior of price marginal cost margins for u s manufac turing after 1956 short run marginal cost is markedly procyclical this is primarily due to procyclical overtime payments incurred beca use employment is not perfectly flexible in most industries output price fails to respond to the cyclical movement in marginal cost so price marginal cost margins are markedly countercyclical the res ults contradict business cycle theories that explain low production i n a recession by a high real cost of producing they support theories that explain low production in a recession by the inability of firms to sell their output copyright 1987 by american economic association

an incremental discount pricing schedule with multiple customers and single price break abstract this paper analyzes how a supplier can formulate the terms of a quantity discount pricing schedule assuming a single incremental discount system a model is developed from which an algorithm is derived for an optimal discount schedule the cases are investigated in which both the discount rate and the break point are unknown and either one is prescribed a numerical example is presented to illustrate the algorithm developed

unemployment getting the questions right in my opinion the form and conception of this conference exemplifies the right instinct for modern macroeconomics there is a fact a big unmistakable unsubtle fact essentially everywhere in the modern industrial capitalist world unemployment rates are much higher than they used to be two or three decades ago why is that if macroeconomics is good for anything it ought to be able to understand and explain that fact we should be able to produce a fairly convincing analytical account of the occurrence and persistence of unusually high unemployment rates you might think that to be a mere commonplace to what other sort of end would anyone organize a conference my experience however is that most high powered academic conferences are stimulated by purely technical developments or less often by ideological or political promotion rather than by the need to deal with an outstanding fact i do not blame anyone for this state of affairs we may not be blessed with many significant observations too big to be quibbled over and technical innovations do need to be thrashed out by experts anyway it is good to be faced by a brute fact that needs explanation it is what macroeconomics ought to be about i compliment the organizers also on a second aspect of the agenda the country by country organization of the papers we can all hope to learn something from cross country comparisons one of the few good ways we have to test analytical ideas is to see whether they can make sense of international differences in outcomes by appealing to international differences in institutional structure and historical environment the right place to start is within each country separately studied by someone who knows the peculiarities of its history and its data you might think that this too ought to be obvious but in fact the usual approach is just the opposite more often than not we fail to take institutional differences seriously one model is supposed to apply everywhere and always each country is just a point on a cross section regression or one among several essentially identical regressions leaving only grumblers to worry about what is exogenous and what is endogenous and whether simple parametrizations do justice to real differences in the way the economic mechanism functions in one place or another i have no way of knowing whether this organized effort will get anywhere in explaining high unemployment but it seems to be set up to give itself the best chance for better or worse probably for the better theoretical and empirical work are closely intertwined in macroeconomics scratch a macro theorist and you find a casual econometrician scratch a macro econometrician and you find a casual theorist usually you do not have to scratch very hard thus the discussion of the issues central to the conference has already hardened into certain characteristic forms there are questions already lying on the table that the individual country papers will be trying to answer i suspect that some

how a dominant retailer might design a purchase contract for a newsvendor type product with price sensitive demand abstract a dominant retailer will purchase a newsvendor type product from a manufacturer who incurs a unit manufacturing cost k the expected retail demand is a function of the unit retail price p how should the retailer design her purchase contract for this increasingly prevalent but inadequately studied scenario we propose plausible adaptations of several contract formats that have been widely studied in the dominant manufacturer context for both symmetric k and a symmetric k knowledge situations we present performance results of these contracts our results then reveal that the performance of these contract formats under our scenario differs considerably from what one would surmise from the well known results published for closely related scenarios for example the widely studied buyback and revenue sharing formats turn out to be largely ineffective when implemented by a dominant retailer in contrast the two part tariff format performs well relative to the theoretically optimal menu of contracts our results highlight the need to study purchase contract formats designed specifically for dominant retailer newsvendor product channels

dynamic factor demands and the effects of energy price shocks a dynamic model is used to understand how sharp changes in energy prices affect investment behavior employment and energy use the authors discuss the theory behind their model selection model specifications estimation methods and data list parameter estimates and elasticities for the selected model and describe the simulations they conclude that 1 the data strongly reject the hypothesis of constant returns to scale within their specification of aggregate production 2 the data indicate adjustment costs on labor are small and 3 their results help reconcile some of the conflicting estimates of energy demand elasticities appearing in recent literature 23 references 3 figures 3 tables

an eoq model with price dependent supply and demand abstract this paper considers a generalization of the economic order quantity eoq model for an end item that requires an input component for production the quantity of input components available for production is a nondecreasing function of the price offered by the producer to its suppliers while the end item demand is also price dependent we analyze the behavior of the optimal replenishment and pricing policy which depends on the economics of production and procurement costs and the prices associated with input components and end items this analysis sheds light on how to deal with price dependent supply in production planning as well as on the value of supplier heterogeneity and information on the relationship between component price and supply

effects of a demand curve s shape on the optimal solutions of a multi echelon inventory pricing model abstract when a price demand relationship is needed in inventory pricing models very often a convenient typically linear function is arbitrarily chosen the common wisdom implication is that any downward sloping demand curve would lead to similar conclusions this paper applies different demand curve functions to a simple inventory pricing model and shows that while the common wisdom implication is valid for a single echelon system assuming different demand curve functions can lead to very different results in a multi echelon system in some situations a very small change in the demand curve appearance leads to very large changes in the model s optimal solutions other significant but counter intuitive effects of the demand curve form are also revealed this paper does not completely resolve the difficulties revealed by the counter intuitive effects reported here but establishing the existence of these effects represents a first step towards developing procedures to handle such effects these procedures will be necessary to ensure the reliability of many multi echelon models for products having price sensitive demands

goodwill hunting and profit sharing decision making in a newspaper chain a generalised equilibrium solution to the stochastic two echelon newsvendor problem is achievable when formulated in the context of some cooperation and coordination between the primal retailer and dual manufacturer operators we build on previous work detailing this equilibrium solution and apply it to the newspaper business the solution incorporates changes in variability encountered due to promotional activity which extends the efficient frontier we also consider consequences for profit and goodwill costs of identifying an equilibrium solution when additional income is generated from a source outside of the supply chain such as advertising we generalise to the supply chain network where there is some knowledge of demand or supply distributions further up or down the supply chain we find that the primal dual formulation and equilibrium solution apply to interactions between components of supply chain networks and illustrate with the transition to the direct distribution of newspapers

joint pricing and inventory policies for make to stock products with deterministic price sensitive demand abstract in this paper we focus on a firm selling a single make to stock product to price sensitive end customers we develop an integrated operations marketing model that can help determine the relevant profit maximizing decision variable values for two pricing policies that the firm might follow price as a decision variable which is advocated by academicians and mark up pricing used by most practitioners we first consider an eoq based model with price and order quantity as independent decision variables we then develop an analogous model where price is a mark up over operating costs per unit and order quantity becomes the sole decision variable we are able to ascertain the optimal decision variable values for each model for log linear and linear demand functions we prove that for such profit maximizing models the optimal batch size is not necessarily monotone increasing in set up cost interestingly our numerical analytical evidence suggests that from a profit perspective it is better for managers to be aggressive on price rather than reducing price too much especially for highly price sensitive and non linear demand moreover we establish that in general the profit penalty for not including inventory costs in determining the optimal batch size or ignoring the batch size optimization issue in a mark up price model is not significant only when the set up cost is quite high and or the firm faces non linear demand from highly price sensitive end consumers does it become crucial for managers to determine the exact optimal batch size and base the mark up price on the entire unit operating cost not only the unit variable production cost

a cooperative game theory model of quantity discounts quantity discounts offered by a monopolist are considered in the context of a bargaining problem in which the buyer and the seller negotiate over the order quantity and the average unit price all units and incremental quantity discounts that permit transaction at a negotiated outcome are described the effects of risk sensitivity and bargaining power on quantity discounts are discussed for alternative bargaining models

to join or not to join group purchasing organization a vendor s decision abstract a group purchasing organization gpo is an entity that utilizes collective buying power to obtain significant discounts from vendors which can be suppliers distributors and manufacturers in the healthcare sector it is reported that about 72 of hospital purchases are settled through gpo contracts this paper seeks to examine two critical questions that vendors face 1 business strategy does partnering with a gpo to offer quantity discounts make strategic sense and if so 2 pricing policy what price will yield optimal maximum profits in such a relationship using a linear quantity discount scheme we find that the size of gpo members strongly influences the vendor s decision to contract or not with the gpo furthermore we show that vendors should price their products close to the reservation prices of the gpo members if the vendors indeed wish to pursue such partnerships

investing in reduced setups in the eoq model this paper is motivated by the observation that the japanese have devoted much time and energy to decreasing setup costs in their manufacturing processes and that there has been little in the way of a formal framework available to use to think about such efforts the object of this paper is to begin to provide such a framework the framework developed identifies only one aspect of the advantages of reducing setups namely reduced inventory related operating costs the other advantages such as improved quality control flexibility and increased effective capacity are not accounted for in this paper nevertheless substantial reductions in setups may be warranted based solely on the benefits identified in this paper the approach taken here introduces an investment cost associated with changing the current setup level and adds a per unit time amortization of this cost to the other costs identified in the standard eoq model the general problem becomes that of minimizing the sum of a convex and a concave function in two special cases the minimization can be carried out explicitly in one of these cases numerous interpretations of the results are made including comparisons of japanese and american practices for example holding other parameters constant there is a critical sales level such that investment is made in reducing setups if and only if the sales rate is above that level when such investment is made the optimal lot size is independent of the sales rate the paper also addresses the joint selection of the setup cost and the sales rate selection of the sales rate is seen as incorporating explicit production and holding costs into the classical monopolist s pricing problem an explicit solution is obtained for the model postulated

optimal ordering and pricing in a quick response system quick response systems enable retailers to estimate customer demand more accurately and improve stocking decisions for perishable products with uncertain demand retailers place separate orders for a product at two different times before the selling season following the initial order additional market information is obtained and the second order amount is decided based on an improved demand forecast in some cases purchase cost associated with the second order is uncertain and demand for the product during the season depends on the selling price we present a solution procedure for finding the optimal order quantity and selling price in this setting we also study the case where any desired portion of the initial order can be cancelled after updating the demand forecast in the numerical study the optimal price is observed to be relatively insensitive to changes in demand variability

price markdown scheme in a multi echelon supply chain in a high tech industry this paper studies the price markdown scheme in a supply chain that consists of a supplier a contract manufacturer cm and a buyer retailer the buyer subcontracts the production of the final product to the cm the cm buys the components from the supplier and charges the buyer a service fee for the final product produced the price markdown is made possible by the supplier with the development of new manufacturing technologies that reduce the production cost for the sourced component consequently the buyer adjusts the retail price in order to possibly stimulate stronger demand that may benefit both the supplier and the buyer under this scenario we identify the optimal discount pricing strategies capacity reservation and the stocking policies for the supplier and the buyer we also investigate the optimal inventory decision for the cm to cope with the price discount by considering both demand and delivery uncertainties our results suggest that higher production cost accelerates the effects of higher price sensitivity on lowering the optimal capacity and stocking policies in the supply chain the effect of mean demand error on the optimal prices is relatively marginal compared with that from price sensitivity we also found that increasing the standard deviation of the random demand does not necessarily increase the stocking level as one would predict the results show that delivery uncertainty plays an important role in the inventory carried beyond the price break we discuss potential extensions for future research

the causes of unemployment in finland 1970 82 some further empirical evidence this study presents an aggregate labour market model of the finnish economy the model is consistent with the finnish institutional features wage determination by collective negotiations and the division of the economy into a supply oriented open sector and a demand oriented closed sector estimated labour market model suggests that the rise in the steady state unemployment rate can be accounted for by the following factors the rise in employer s tax rate the rise in the availability of benefits while out of work increased union strength increased labour force participation and import price shocks

a game theory approach in seller buyer supply chain in this paper several seller buyer supply chain models are proposed which incorporate both cost factors as well as elements of competition and cooperation between seller and buyer we assume that unit marketing expenditure and unit price charged by the buyer influence the demand of the product being sold the relationships between seller and buyer will be modeled by non cooperative and cooperative games respectively the non cooperative game is based on the stackelberg strategy solution concept where we consider separately the case when the seller is the leader seller stackelberg and also when the buyer is the leader buyer stackelberg pareto efficient solutions will be provided for the cooperative game model numerical examples presented in this paper including sensitivity analysis of some key parameters will compare the results between different models considered

a procurement decision support system in business volume discount environments emergence of a new discount pricing schedule called business volume discount becomes a major obstacle for procurement managers in finding the best purchasing strategy in the context of business volume discount a supplier offers discounts on total dollar amount of sales volume not on the quantity or variety of the products purchased from the supplier this paper describes a procurement decision support system pdss that has been successfully implemented to improve the purchasing activities of regional bell telephone companies in most purchasing operations a flexible procurement plan is considered a necessity because of the uncertainties associated with product demand and procurement budget pdss provides this flexibility by combining two different purchasing strategies purchasing on an annual commitment basis and on an as ordered basis although the development of the system is motivated by a particular application procurement of transmission plug in in one of the regional telephone companies the system is being used for a variety of procurement decisions involving business volume discount in the telecommunications industry the results of the implementation indicate that cost savings of up to 15 are achieved pdss use is not limited to the companies in the telecommunications industry the pdss model is applicable to any organization having a centralized procurement operation with business volume discount

providing advice to jobseekers at low cost an experimental study on online advice we develop and evaluate experimentally a novel tool that redesigns the job search process by providing tailored advice at low cost we invited jobseekers to our computer facilities for twelve consecutive weekly sessions to search for real jobs on our web interface for one half instead of relying on their own search criteria we use readily available labour market data to display relevant alternative occupations and associated jobs the data indicate that this broadens the set of jobs they consider and increases their job interviews especially for participants who otherwise search narrowly and have been unemployed for a few months

optimal pricing and lot sizing under conditions of perishability and partial backordering we formulate a generalized model of dynamic pricing and lot sizing by a reseller who sells a perishable good we assume that when it is economic to backlog demand the reseller can plan for periods of shortage during which demand can be partially backordered when the good is highly perishable the reseller may need to backlog demand in order to market the good at a reasonable price we present a simple solution procedure for solving the optimization problem the procedure entails solving first a single nonlinear equation and then if required two nonlinear equations

supplier pricing and lot sizing when demand is price sensitive abstract the problem of co ordination between a vendor and a buyer is formulated as a two person fixed threat bargaining game the vendor decides on his lot size and the price schedule he is to offer to the buyer the buyer decides upon his lot size and the selling price in the market we have characterized pareto efficient solutions and the nash bargaining solution for the problem we have also proposed two pricing schedules for the vendor who is supplying to a large population of buyers the first one is based upon profit sharing the second one resembles the classical all unit quantity discount schedule we have thus provided for the supplier a procedure for setting all unit quantity discount schedule

wages policy and unemployment in australia it is generally accepted among australian economists that high rates of growth of wages at various times over the last decade have made the achievement of full employment and lower rates of inflation more difficult fear of a further acceleration of wage growth has also been a policy constraint it is when one attempts to go further that considerable disagreement becomes evident from a labour market viewpoint there does not seem to be a consensus as to the answers to the two broad questions that should be addressed first how important are wage changes relative to other factors that depress employment and add to the inflation rate second how does government policy impinge on the process that generates wage changes to do justice to both of these in a paper as short as this one is difficult so i shall focus most of the paper on the second question the relationships between government policy and wage changes are particularly important at this time for most of the last decade successive governments have operated a national wages policy which to a large degree has been based on the indexation of wages for past price changes the latest experiment the prices and incomes accord is the centrepiece of the current government s employment and inflation policy and after almost two years of wide community and media support the key principles upon which it is based are suddenly being questioned 1 our prime endeavour therefore will be to build up sufficient understanding of the wage determination process so that some evaluation can be made as to the effectiveness of these national wage policies this turns out to be a remarkably difficult task which generates considerable concern in our mind that the data may not be sufficiently rich to serve as a basis for sound judgments it does appear however that the effect of a given level of unemployment upon wage changes has consistently weakened over the last decade why this should be so is a major unresolved puzzle i offer a loosely constructed theory that is consistent with the facts but it is by no means the only possible explanation section i provides a description of wage setting in australia and some key facts of the economy in section ii the statistical analysis of wage changes focuses on two competing theories one is the phillips curve approach and the other stresses that wage outcomes may be to a significant degree independent of the level of unemployment and may depend instead on utilization rates of labour within the firm section iii considers the efficacy of incomes policies in australia some final comments areoffered in section iv

unfair allocation of gains under the equal price allocation method in purchasing groups certain purchasing groups do not flourish a supposed reason for this is a creeping dissatisfaction among various members of a group with the allocation of the cooperative gains in this paper we analyze unfairness resulting from using the commonly used equal price ep method for allocating gains under the assumption of continuous quantity discounts we demonstrate that this unfairness is caused by neglecting a particular component of the added value of individual group members next we develop two fairness ratios and tie these to fairness properties from cooperative game theory the ratios show among other things that being too big a player in a purchasing group can lead to decreasing gains they can be used to assess if ep is an unfair method in specific situations finally we discuss measures a purchasing group could consider in order to attenuate perceived unfairness thereby the group may improve its stability and prosperity

channel coordination and quantity discounts this paper presents a model for analyzing the impact of joint decision policies on channel coordination in a system consisting of a supplier and a group of homogeneous buyers the joint decision policy characterized by the unit selling price and the order quantity is coordinated through quantity discounts and franchise fees both the annual demand rate and the operating cost including the purchase ordering and inventory holding costs depend on the joint decision policy employed this paper contributes by integrating work addressing quantity discounts on inventory and ordering policies and work focusing on the control mechanism provided by quantity discounts in channel coordination it is shown that the optimal all unit quantity discount policy is equivalent to the optimal incremental quantity discount policy in achieving channel coordination furthermore it is shown that quantity discounts alone are not sufficient to guarantee joint profit maximization the analyses of the general models are illustrated by specific analytical results obtained for a given demand function