returns with wholesale price discount contract in a newsvendor problem abstract we consider a newsvendor problem in a supply chain that consists of a manufacturer and a retailer the manufacturer is the stackelberg leader and the retailer is the follower we examine how the manufacturer can contract a wholesale price only agreement with its retailer that maximizes its profit we also propose a returns policy with a wholesale price discount scheme returns discount contract that can achieve supply chain coordination using the wholesale price only contract as a benchmark we show how the manufacturer sets a discounted wholesale price in a returns discount contract that enhances both profits of the manufacturer and the retailer as well as improves the supply chain efficiency

regulating consumer financial products evidence from credit cards we analyze the effectiveness of consumer financial regulation by considering the 2009 credit card accountability responsibility and disclosure card act we use a panel data set covering 160 million credit card accounts and a difference in differences research design that compares changes in outcomes over time for consumer credit cards which were subject to the regulations to changes for small business credit cards which the law did not cover we estimate that regulatory limits on credit card fees reduced overall borrowing costs by an annualized 1 6 of average daily balances with a decline of more than 5 3 for consumers with fico scores below 660 we find no evidence of an offsetting increase in interest charges or a reduction in the volume of credit taken together we estimate that the card act saved consumers 11 9 billion a year we also analyze a nudge that disclosed the interest savings from paying off balances in 36 months rather than making minimum payments we detect a small increase in the share of accounts making the 36 month payment value but no evidence of a change in overall payments jel codes d0 d14 g0 g02 g21 g28 l0 l13 l15

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

coordinating a decentralized supply chain with customer returns and price dependent stochastic demand using a buyback policy abstract we investigate a decentralized supply chain that consists of a manufacturer and a retailer where the retailer simultaneously determines the retail price and order quantity while experiencing customer returns and price dependent stochastic demand we propose an agreement between the manufacturer and the retailer that includes two buyback prices one for unsold inventory and a second for customer returns and show that this type of easy to implement agreement can achieve perfect supply chain coordination and be a win win for both manufacturer and retailer when a complementary profit sharing agreement is included

the role of intermediaries in low carbon transitions empowering innovations to unlock district heating in the uk abstract the literature on socio technical transitions considers how technological innovations can be established within the context of an incumbent regime that is often resistant or inflexible to change strategic niche management is an approach to catalysing a transition to a new regime using protected niche spaces to enable development and experimentation with an innovation intermediary actors play an important role in establishing these niches as they facilitate knowledge sharing and build the wider networks and systems needed to support an innovation the influence of intermediaries within socio technical transitions and strategic niche management is still an under researched area in this paper we use a decision theatre research process to collect empirical evidence from a range of local stakeholders involved in establishing new district heating projects in the united kingdom uk this method carried out in a group workshop format enables understanding of the interactions between stakeholders throughout the stages of the district heating development process the study suggests that intermediaries can play a role in supporting niche empowering processes the existing institutional framework surrounding intermediary actors and the geographical scale at which they work within that framework are shown to be influential on actors agency to choose their approach to empowering an innovation the work highlights the potential for intermediaries to support the restructuring of this institutional framework to enable more radical stretch and transform empowering activities

supply chain coordination for the joint determination of order quantity and reorder point using credit option abstract decisions regarding order quantity and reorder point are two major challenges in supply chain inventory management in this paper a coordination model of the joint determination of these two decision variables is proposed a decentralized supply chain consisting of one buyer and one supplier in a multi period setting is investigated demand and lead times are uncertain in our model an incentive scheme based on credit option has been developed to encourage the buyer to participate in the coordination model in this model the downstream member has the option of using credit to purchase goods during the credit time subject to its commitment to a jointly agreed order quantity and reorder point the credit time is determined in such a way that the two parties have incentives to participate the proposed incentive scheme can share the benefits of coordination between the two members based on their bargaining power the proposed model shows that the coordination of the reorder point together with order quantity can increase the overall chain profitability as well as each member s profitability

consumer spending and the economic stimulus payments of 2008 abstract we measure the change in household spending caused by receipt of the economic stimulus payments of 2008 using questions added to the consumer expenditure survey and variation from the ran

a classification of literature on determining the lot size under quantity discounts abstract determining a lot size in the presence of either all units or incremental discounts has represented one of major interests of materials managers it is a common practice that the suppliers offer quantity discount to entice the buyers to purchase more and to achieve economies of scale for transportation and processing costs this paper will classify the literature on lot sizing determination under several types of discount schemes and discuss some of the significant literature in this area over two decades also some future research areas have been identified

economic purchasing strategies for temporary price discounts abstract the familiar model for determining the optimal stock replenishment strategy for a temporary price reduction is based on the simple eoq this paper extends the logic to a composite eoq model which can be decomposed into a family of hybrid models with broader operational flexibility the composite eoq provides malleability and flexibility to changing operational requirements by disaggregating complexity it approaches the resourcefulness of an expert system with its attendant economies

measuring consumer expenditures with payment diaries payment diaries measure consumer expenditures by tracking authorization of payments by instrument cash check debit or credit card etc three notable results emerge from comparing the 2012 diary of consumer payment choice dcpc to other estimates of consumer expenditures 1 dcpc payments are 75 higher than consumer expenditure survey estimates 2 dcpc consumption estimates are 17 higher than comparable personal consumption expenditure estimates and 3 dcpc payments roughly equal comparably adjusted national income and product accounts personal disposable income the dcpc s relative success stems from measuring expenditures aggregated into lumpy payments shopping baskets relatively low respondent burden and effective random sampling jel e21 d12 d14

a quantity discount approach to supply chain coordination abstract quantity discounts provide a practical foundation for inventory coordination in supply chains however typical supply chain participants may encounter difficulties in implementing the coordination policy simply because 1 specified lot size adjustments may deviate from the economic lot sizes and 2 the buying firm may face amplified overstocking risks related to increased order quantities the main objective of this study is to develop a quantity discount model that resolves the practical challenges associated with implementing quantity discount policies for supply chain coordination between a supplier and a buyer the proposed buyer s risk adjustment b ra model allows the supplier to offer discounts that capitalize on the original economic lot sizes and share the buyer s risk of temporary overstocking under uncertain demand the analytical results suggest that the proposed b ra discount approach is a feasible alternative for supply chain coordination under uncertain demand conditions

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

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

shadow economies size causes and consequences using various methods the size of the shadow economy in 76 developing transition and oecd countries is estimated average size varies from 12 percent of gdp for oecd countries to 23 percent for transition countries and 39 percent for developing countries increasing taxation and social security contributions combined with rising state regulations are driving forces for the increase of the shadow economy especially in oecd countries according to some findings corruption has a positive impact on the size of the shadow economy and a growing shadow economy has a negative effect on official gdp growth

how people pay evidence from grocery store data abstract empirical evidence based on grocery store transaction data shows that consumer payment behavior at the point of sale is important for understanding models of money demand there are statistically significant effects of transaction costs opportunity costs and product characteristics on the choice of payment instrument which then in turn affect money demand these results emphasize the overlap between the work of empirical researchers in payment choice and theoretical modelers of monetary economics and should inform both literatures

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

a two stage supply chain coordination mechanism considering price sensitive demand and quantity discounts abstract this paper explores the coordination between a supplier and a buyer within a decentralized supply chain through the use of quantity discounts in a game theoretic model within this model the players face inventory and pricing decisions we propose both cooperative and non cooperative approaches considering that the product traded experiences a price sensitive demand in the first case we study the dynamics of the game from the supplier s side as the leader in the negotiation obtaining a stackelberg equilibrium and then show how the payoff of this player could still improve from this point in the second case a cooperative model is formulated where decisions are taken simultaneously emulating a centralized firm showing the benefits of the cooperation between the players we further formulate a pricing game where the buyer is allowed to set different prices to the final customer as a reaction to the supplier s discount decisions for the latter we investigate the difference between feasibility of implementing a retail discount given a current coordination mechanism and without it finally the implications of transportation costs are analyzed in the quantity discount schedule our findings are illustrated with a numerical example showing the difference in the players payoff in each case and the optimal strategies comparing in each case our results with existing work

designing contracts for a reverse supply chain with strategic recycling behavior of consumers abstract in this paper we propose five typical contracts to coordinate decentralized reverse supply chains with strategic recycling behavior of consumers first a reverse supply chain model with strategic recycling behavior of consumers is developed based on the classical newsvendor problem next after analyzing the wholesale price contract we find that the collection quantity of used products increases with the wholesale price then we develop a two stage price contract and find that under this contract the manufacturer could increase the collection quantity by offering a direct incentive to the collector afterwards using the centralized optimal profit as the benchmark we compare the wholesale price contract with the subsidy contract and the cost pooling contract respectively the results show that the subsidy contract is more beneficial to the manufacturer while the cost pooling contract is helpful to the collector yet both lead to lower transfer prices than the wholesale price contract for reverse supply chains finally we design an indemnity contract and conclude that the collector s maximum performance is achieved only when the transfer price equals to the indemnity the total profit of the reverse supply chain under the indemnity contact is not less than that under the wholesale price contract

explaining adoption and use of payment instruments by u s consumers this paper develops and estimates a structural model of adoption and usage of payment instruments by u s consumers we utilize a cross section from the survey of consumer payment choice a new survey of consumer behavior our empirical model combines the elements of a discrete continuous model where rst a consumer picks a product and then chooses how much to use it with a bundled choice model in which consumers can choose multiple products that may aect the utility derived from each other we consider how changes in the costs of adoption and usage may dierentially aect substitution patterns these results are particularly relevant for bank pricing of debit card services in response to the regulation of interchange fees on debit cards enacted by the durbin amendment to the dodd frank act which became eective on

optimal policies for multi echelon inventory problems with batch ordering in many production distribution systems materials flow from one stage to another in fixed lot sizes for example a retailer orders a full truckload from a manufacturer to qualify for a quantity discount a factory has a material handling system that moves full containers of parts from one production stage to the next in this paper we derive optimal policies for multi stage serial and assembly systems where materials flow in fixed batches the optimal policies have a simple structure and their parameters can be easily determined this research extends the multi echelon inventory theory in several ways it generalizes the clark scarf model by allowing batch transfers of inventories rosling 1989 shows that assembly systems can be interpreted as serial systems under the assumption that there are no setup costs we show that the series interpretation still holds when materials flow in fixed batches which satisfy a certain regularity condition finally veinott 1965 identifies an optimal policy for a single location inventory system with batch ordering this paper generalizes his result to multi echelon settings

measurement error in recall surveys and the relationship between household size and food demand variation in household survey design and implementation is used to obtain evidence of nonrandom measurement error in recall surveys of household expenditure these surveys which are used especially in developing countries appear to have measurement errors in food expenditures and in food budget shares that are correlated with household size these correlated errors may be part of the explanation for a puzzling pattern of falling food demand with rising household size in poorer countries

two echelon supply chain coordination through the unified number of annual orders abstract this paper studies the problem of how to coordinate a one supplier multi retailer supply chain by requiring retailers to adopt the unified number of annual orders proposed by the supplier the paper presents two coordination models one considering a small number of retailers the other considering a large number of retailers in the proposed models the supplier views all retailers or some selected retailers if more beneficial in the supply chain as one group then offers a price discount to entice the retailers in this group placing their orders only with the specific number of annual orders a heuristic is developed for each model to let the supplier know which retailers will be selected to implement the common number of annual orders and how to determine the corresponding optimal number of annual replenishments and price discount by using a numerical study we evaluate the benefit of the proposed coordination strategy

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

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