multi product budget constrained acquisition and pricing with uncertain demand and supplier quantity discounts abstract we consider the joint acquisition and pricing problem where the retailer sells multiple products with uncertain demands and the suppliers provide all unit quantity discounts the problem is to determine the optimal acquisition quantities and selling prices so as to maximize the retailer s expected profit subject to a budget constraint this is the first extension to consider supplier discounts in the constrained multi product newsvendor pricing problem we establish a mixed integer nonlinear programming minlp model to formulate the problem and develop a lagrangian based solution approach computational results for the test problems involving up to thousand products are reported which show that the proposed approach can obtain high quality solutions in a very short time

occupational self selection a human capital approach to sex differences in occupational structure a rich and diverse literature exists concerning the distribution of labor incomes one approach namely that of human capital concentrates on lifetime accumulation paths of earnings capacity units human capital individual variations in human capital imply differences in earnings power thereby yielding strong implications concerning earnings distribution within a population despite its explanatory power the human capital model has been widely criticized one criticism centers on its inability to obtain inferences concerning occupational distribution the purpose of this paper is to alleviate at least some such criticism by applying the hedonic price approach so as to embed occupational choice into the human capital framework the significance is that neoclassical economic theory can be used to obtain implications concerning the determinants of occupational structure excerpt

modeling a multi attribute utility newsvendor with partial backlogging abstract traditional newsvendor models usually focus on single profit maximization or cost minimization approaches however making a monetary estimate of the consequences of lost sales as a result of shortages is often a difficult task for many practitioners besides there is still a lack of an explicit account of decision making judgments on the multiple consequences of making decisions with regard to order quantities in order to deal with this problem this paper presents a multi attribute utility model for the newsvendor problem with regard to profit the impacts of service level on corporate image and on customers goodwill and the impact on the environment arising from the disposal of unsold products demand is partially backlogged according to a decreasing exponential function of the waiting time the fundamental principles and limitations related to the application of the model built are also discussed

a two item newsboy problem with substitutability previous research on the newsboy problem is based on the assumption that in case of a shortage unsatisfied demand is lost such an assumption is inappropriate for items that have a close substitute in this paper we formulate a two item newsboy problem with substitutability tinps upper and lower bounds on the optimal order quantities of the two items are derived since analytical solutions to the problem are difficult to obtain a monte carlo simulation is used to identify the optimal solution to the tinps order quantities identified by the simulation provide higher expected profit than would have been obtainable without considering substitutability

globalization and the gender earnings gap evidence from sri lanka and cambodia disasters in bangladesh and protests elsewhere have created an intense debate about the value particularly to women of apparel employment in developing countries this paper focuses on how the forces of globalization specifically the multi fibre arrangement mfa have affected women s wages in the apparel sector in developing countries the paper uses household and labor force surveys from cambodia and sri lanka to estimate both apparel wage premiums relative to other industries and the male female wage gap before and after the end of the mfa the approach builds on new models that apply traditional trade theory e g the heckscher ohlin and stolper samuelson theorems to analyze the effect of globalization on gender based earnings the authors find large positive wage premiums and a closing of the male female wage gap during the mfa period but smaller premiums and a widening wage gap after the end of the mfa the results suggest that the benefits of apparel exports for women in developing countries remain significant post mfa they also model an approach for studying the effects of globalization that differentiates males and females as separate factors this may be a fruitful alternative to discrimination models or those that analyze the effects of globalization on women in terms of skill further research is necessary to identify the potential development effects of post mfa apparel employment and to thoroughly compare the benefits documented in this paper with the costs that may come with apparel jobs

an extended newsboy problem with shortage level constraints abstract it is only an order quantity which is decided for a spot selling time in the classical newsboy problem both the purchase timing and the time variant variance of the demand are neglected when the vendor gives a price discount for early purchase the buyer purchases the quantities of price discount at the cost of forecast bias the buyer has to forecast the demand early before purchase ahead of schedule but it may increase the variance of the forecasted demand which is a forecast bias this time variant variance of the demand is embedded into the model when the average shortage level is specified to an upper limit both the purchase timing and the order quantity are simultaneously considered as the decision variables of the extended newsboy problem in this paper the resultant outcomes could apply to some cases in the futures contracts

women empowerment and economic development women empowerment and economic development are closely related in one direction development alone can play a major role in driving down inequality between men and women in the other direction empowering women may benefit development does this imply that pushing just one of these two levers would set a virtuous circle in motion this paper reviews the literature on both sides of the empowerment development nexus and argues that the interrelationships are probably too weak to be self sustaining and that continuous policy commitment to equality for its own sake may be needed to bring about equality between men and women

money market mutual funds an experiment in ad hoc deregulation a note the astounding growth of money market mutual funds mmmfs in the late 1970s and early 1980s and their interaction with regulated financial institutions has become a classic case study of the prpcess of financial market innovation and consumer economic education mmmfs grew from 2 2 billion in assets at the end of 1974 to 74 4 billion in assets at the end of 1980 by the middle of 1982 they have further tripled in asset size to over 200 billion money market mutual funds arose primarily because of deposit rate ceilings and other liability regulations which prevented the traditional financial intermediaries from offering the public a market rate and a highly liquid deposittype account the growth of mmmfs however was caused not merely by the availability of a more desirable financial instrument but was actually accelerated by the piecemeal nature of the financial deregulation process the introduction of the money market certificate mmc at commercial banks and thrift institutions appears to have greatly accelerated consumer interest rate sensitivity the massive advertising campaign for money market certificates that accompanied the introduction of the mmcs not only led to a large growth in these account types but also led to an explosive spillover growth in money market mutual funds thus the partial deregulation of deposit liabilities meant to alleviate the competition of mmmfs appears to have greatly accelerated their appeal to the consumer in attempting to control the slow hemorrhaging of the regulated financial institutions the regulators or deregulators as the case may be created a new highly pressured environment which has resulted in a massive leakage of funds from financial institutions by deregulating only short term liabilities of regulated financial institutions the regulators in essence allowed most consumers to receive market interest rates only on short term deposits this piecemeal deregulation in conjunction with an inverted yield curve led to a surge in the supply of funds to the short end of the market this shortening of the liability structure of financial institutions has substantially worsened the maturity mismatch of these financial institutions this is especially true of thrift institutions whose ability to acquire assets other than long term fixed rate mortgages was greatly restricted until recently it is in this environment that we examine the growth of the mmmf

optimal pricing and inventory strategies with multiple price markdowns over time abstract we study a multiple period discount problem for products that undergo several price cuts over time in the high technology sector electronic component suppliers are often able to offer pre announced price cuts to buyers due to technological innovation that allows them to produce existing components at lower costs in this context suppliers are primarily concerned with the optimal pricing decisions for the components over their life spans in order to achieve the highest possible revenues accordingly the buying firms i e manufacturers or retailers also need to identify the corresponding optimal retail prices and order quantity for the finished products that utilize the components for which discounts are offered frequently in this research we develop a multiple period price discount model that addresses this issue extant research in the price discount literature focuses on supply chains pricing and inventory decisions in the presence of a single price discount the proposed model in contrast offers a systematic decision tool for identifying the optimal strategies throughout a product s life span our results show that a decentralized supply chain characterized by multi period discounts over a product s life typically achieves 75 percent supply chain efficiency we undertake a series of numerical experiments based on the model and discuss their managerial implications

demand uncertainty and returns policies for a seasonal product an alternative model abstract marvel and peck international economic review 36 1995 691 714 considered the following seasonal product problem a manufacturer sets wholesale price p w unit and return credit r unit the retailer then sets retailer price p r unit and order quantity q how should the manufacturer set p w and r demand uncertainty consists of two components valuation and customers arrivals our more realistic models reveal effects unobservable from marvel peck s e g i setting r 0 benefits the manufacturer much more than the retailer ii valuation but not customer arrival uncertainty is imperative for the retailer without it the manufacturer can set p w and r such that he reaps most of the profits

note note on optimal ordering quantity to realize a pre determined level of profit in this note we consider the one period inventory model in which it is required to determine the order quantity which maximizes the probability of realizing a predetermined level of profit r we give a condition for determining the optimal order quantity and provide explicit expressions for the optimal order quantity in three special cases

the newsboy problem under progressive multiple discounts abstract previous research on the newsboy problem is based on the assumption that excess inventory is either discounted once and sold or disposed of real world settings especially in the apparel industry involve many cases where multiple discounts are used under multiple discounts a retailer has a series of discounts that are progressively used as the product remains on the shelf in this paper we formulate and solve a newsboy problem with multiple e discounts the new problem is solved with the objectives of 1 maximizing the expected profit and 2 maximizing the probability of achieving a target profit we show that multiple discounts when possible provide higher expected profit than using a single discount we verify the analytical results using numerical integration and illustrate the results with numerical examples

capital accumulation trade liberalization and rising wage inequality the case of argentina abstract capital accumulation can modify the relative productivity between skilled and unskilled workers leading to changes in the wage structure in particular if capital goods are relatively more complementary to skilled workers a positive correlation between investment in physical capital and the wage premium would be expected in this article we present evidence for this hypothesis by taking advantage of the variability in wage premia and capital investment across industries in argentina s manufacturing sector we conclude that the wage premium for skilled workers increased more in those industries with higher investment in machinery and equipment the overall evidence seems to indicate that industry affiliation is an important determinant of earnings differentials by skill group

a model to evaluate acquisition price and quantity of used products for remanufacturing abstract in this paper an analytical model is proposed to evaluate optimal acquisition price and quantity policy based on the quality of returned used products that are subsequently used for remanufacturing the model is developed from the perspective of a consolidation center which facilitates the collection of used products in various collection centers by offering an acquisition price based on the quality of used products receive all of the collected used products and consolidate them with replacement parts before sending the consignment to the remanufacturer it is assumed that the consolidation center receives an order from the remanufacturer for a set quantity and an associated price for used products in a quality level the consolidation center then evaluates optimal acquisition price and quantity policy for used products based on the available information on stochastic return quantity and quality and the cost of predefined set of replacement parts the policy so obtained is offered to the collection centers to initiate the collection of used products in their respective area of operation the impact of the model is studied through a numerical study the authors believe that the model developed here is the first such pricing model in a reverse logistics setting

a macintyrean perspective on the collapse of a money market fund this paper conducts an ethical analysis of the 2008 closure of a us money market fund entitled the reserve primary fund rpf which triggered the first run in the money market sector and a resultant liquidity crisis that harmed the entire us financial system although many academics and regulators have studied and written about rpf the question whether the decision that caused the fund to collapse represented any ethical dilemma has not been addressed to date with this purpose in mind the paper will examine the events that culminated in the closure of rpf according to alasdair macintyre s virtue ethics approach in so doing the paper aims to extend the applicability of macintyre s concepts to the finance industry in general and to provide a framework to predict and so potentially prevent crises like that exemplified by the rpf case

the newsvendor problem with an in season price adjustment consider a retailer stocking a seasonal item facing a stochastic demand where information about the demand becomes more accurate as the selling season progresses the retailer places orders before the start of the season and in season reorders are not possible this article extends the classical newsvendor model by allowing the retailer to make an in season price adjustment after conducting a review and using the realized demand to obtain an accurate estimate of the remaining demand our results include answers to the following questions what price should the retailer choose how much should the retailer have ordered at the start of the season given the option of adjusting prices in season this model was motivated by a problem in car rental revenue management and has applications in perishable assets revenue management parm where price adjustments are needed towards the end of the selling season

newsvendor problem with clearance pricing abstract the newsvendor nv problem assumes that the salvage clearance price at which the leftover inventory is disposed of is a given parameter of the problem in this paper we relax this assumption and consider the nv problem with the salvage clearance price as a decision variable we have drawn from the literatures on the nv problem and clearance markdown dynamic pricing to develop three stochastic models in this paper in the first model we assume that while the seasonal demand is exogenous and stochastic the end of season demand is endogenous and deterministic the second model extends the first model by assuming that the end of season demand is endogenous and stochastic finally the third model considers that both the seasonal and end of season demands are endogenous and stochastic we have provided solution procedures for solving the stochastic optimization problems we have also performed sensitivity analyses to assess the sensitivity of the optimal expected profit and order quantity to different problem parameters specifically we have found that the optimal expected profit is most sensitive to the variable cost per unit mean seasonal demand and market potential of end of season demand our models will be useful for retailers of products with a short selling season and a short end of season period for clearance sale of leftover inventory such that there is a single replenishment opportunity at the beginning of the season and a single opportunity for setting the salvage price for clearance sale based on the leftover inventory and end of season demand pattern the paper is concluded with possible directions for future research

persistence of regulatory innovation mmmfs and financial intermediaries abstract regulation induced innovation may persist in the deregulated environment if the fixed costs of innovation are too high to be incurred without the incentives created by binding regulation the example of money market mutual funds mmmfs illustrates the dynamics leading to lasting change the effects of mmmfs entry on thrift and commercial bank deposit shares are examined mmmfs are found to substitute for thrift but not commercial bank deposits mmmfs reduced thrift deposit share deregulation did not restore lost share and substitutability persisted into the post regulation environment with increases in gnp mmmfs now acquire share that would conceivably have gone to banking institutions

product selection for newsboy type products with normal demands and unequal costs abstract in this paper we consider two newsboy type products with unequal prices and costs both demands are independent and follow normal distributions with unknown parameters and we study the product selection problem which deals with comparing two products and selecting the one that has a significantly higher profitability in which the profitability is defined to the probability of achieving a target profit under the optimal ordering policy the statistical hypothesis testing methodology is performed to tackle this selection problem critical value of the test is calculated to determine the selection decision sample size required for a designated power and confidence level is also investigated an application example on comparing english teaching magazines is presented to illustrate the practicality of our approach

linking advertising and quantity decisions in the single period inventory model abstract the single period problem spp also known as the newsboy or news vendor problem is to find the order quantity which maximizes the expected profit in a single period probabilistic demand framework interest in the spp remains unabated and many extensions to it have been proposed in the last decade an important aspect of the spp is the effect of advertising on sales in this paper we extend the spp to a case in which advertising leads to increases in sales we assume that the mean demand is increasing and concave in advertising expenditure and address three cases of demand variance as a function of advertising expenditure 1 demand has constant variance 2 demand has constant coefficient of variation and 3 demand has an increasing coefficient of variation we deal with two objectives a maximizing the expected profit and b maximizing the probability of achieving a target profit we provide closed or near closed form solutions to the problem under uniform exponential and normal demand distributions we illustrate the results using numerical examples and provide some insights into the effect of advertising

a pricing model for clearing end of season retail inventory the problem of setting prices for clearing retail inventories of fashion goods is a difficult task that is further exacerbated by the fact that markdowns enacted near the end of the selling season have a smaller impact on demand in this article we present discrete time models for setting clearance prices in such an environment when demand is deterministic we compute optimal prices and show that decreasing reservation prices lead to declining optimal prices when demand is stochastic and arbitrarily correlated across planning periods we obtain bounds on the optimal expected revenue and on optimal prices we also develop a heuristic procedure for finding near optimal prices and test its accuracy through numerical experiments these experiments reveal new insights for practitioners for example the penalty for choosing clearance price once and keeping it unchanged for the remainder of the selling season is found to be small when either the mean reservation prices do not change appreciably over time or when they drop sharply after the first period

reordering strategies for a newsboy type product abstract this paper considers the very common situation in which a single period newsboy type product may be ordered or produced twice during a season period we show that the explicit consideration of this reorder opportunity makes the newsboy problem very much richer the specific version considered in this paper allows a reorder during mid season after the early season demand has been observed and this reorder arrives after a given lead time the demand distributions during the various portions of the season may have very general distribution forms also the late season and early season demands may be dependent solution procedures are developed to find the best way to exploit this reorder opportunity and our numerical solutions indicate that this reorder opportunity can improve profits considerably as long as the product s profit margin is not very high other real world variations of this two order newsboy problem are briefly discussed

the multi period newsboy problem we will try to generalize the so called newsboy model so that we can deal with unsatisfied demand or unsold quantity consider the time interval that consists of multiple ordering cycles assume that the probability density function of demand is given for each cycle then our problem is to make the ordering plan with which we can maximize the expected profit in the classical newsboy model ordering quantity is always equal to the planned initial inventory level but if we take account of unsatisfied demand and unsold quantity the desired ordering quantity must be determined by a proper stochastic rule then in stead of determining the ordering quantity of each cycle we must plan the initial inventory level so that the expected profit may be maximized if unsold exists in present cycle the ordering quantity of next cycle becomes smaller than the planned inventory level and if unsatisfied demand exists in the present cycle the ordering quantity of next cycle becomes larger than the planned inventory level

the single item newsboy problem with dual performance measures and quantity discounts abstract this paper considers models for the single item newsboy problem with quantity discount and the following dual performance measure maximize the expected profit subject to a constraint that the probability of achieving a target profit level is no less than a predetermined risk level we also consider two types of quantity discount all unit and incremental for our models with zero shortage cost a closed form solution for determining the optimal order quantity is derived however models with positive shortage cost can only be solved numerically

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

optimal ordering discounting and pricing in the single period problem abstract the single period problem spp also known as the newsboy or newsvendor problem is to find the order quantity which maximizes the expected profit in a single period probabilistic demand framework previous extensions to the spp include in separate models the simultaneous determination of the optimal price and quantity when demand is price dependent and the determination of the optimal order quantity when progressive discounts with preset prices are used to sell excess inventory in this paper we extend the spp to the case in which demand is price dependent and multiple discounts with prices under the control of the newsvendor are used to sell excess inventory first we develop two algorithms for determining the optimal number of discounts under fixed discounting cost for a given order quantity and realization of demand then we identify the optimal order quantity before any demand is realized we also analyze the joint determination of the order quantity and initial price we illustrate the models and provide some insights using numerical examples

international trade and the gender wage gap new evidence from india s manufacturing sector summary this study examines how increasing competitive forces from india s trade liberalization have affected women s relative wages and employment neoclassical theory implies that costly discrimination against female workers should diminish over time with increased competition we incorporate this idea into a theoretical model of competition and industry concentration and test the model using repeated cross sections of india s national sample survey organization nsso household survey data merged with trade and production data from 1983 to 2004 estimates from ordinary least squares ols and fixed effects regressions at the industry level indicate that increasing openness to trade is associated with larger wage gaps in india s concentrated manufacturing industries