employment and structural impacts of material efficiency strategies results from five case studies abstract in order to come up with a sound assessment of the effects of material efficiency innovations on growth employment and competitiveness different economic mechanisms have to be considered from a methodological point of view the analysis must be able to account for technology specific aspects the employment impacts of five innovations are analyzed plastic and paper recycling increased life span of automobiles car sharing and bio based products time horizons for all strategies are scenarios until 2020 the economic impacts are context specific with regard to innovation technology and country the economic impacts highlight substantial structural adjustments the overall economic net impact on employment tends to be neutral to positive stronger positive economic impacts result if first mover advantages can be established

channel coordination under price protection midlife returns and end of life returns in dynamic markets this paper examines three channel policies that are used in declining price environments price protection p is a mechanism under which the manufacturer pays the retailer a credit applying to the retailer s unsold inventory when thewholesale price drops during the life cycle midlife returns m allow the retailer to return units partway through the life cycle at some rebate and end of life returns e allow the retailer to return unsold units at the end of the life cycle under decliningretail prices if the wholesale prices and the return rebates are set properly then em i e midlife and end of life returns achieves channel coordination however such a policy may not be implementable because it may require the manufacturer to be worse off as a result of coordination if p is used in addition to em and the terms are set properly then pem guarantees both coordination and a win win outcome if theretail price is constant over time then em is sufficient to guarantee both coordination and a win win outcome

product and sales contract design in remanufacturing abstract we develop and analyze an economic model of remanufacturing to address two main research questions first we explore which market cost and product type conditions induce a profit maximizing firm to be a remanufacturer given a separate secondary remanufactured goods market such markets exist for consumer goods where newness is a differentiating factor second we describe what effect profitable remanufacturing has on the environment our stylized modeling framework for analyzing these issues incorporates three components lease contracting product design and remanufacturing volume to operationalize this framework we model and solve for the optimal decisions of two firm types a non remanufacturer which we call a traditional firm and a remanufacturer which we call a green firm we describe conditions under which remanufacturing is and is not profitable and demonstrate that under certain cost and market conditions remanufacturing has negative consequences for the environment our results have implications for firms and policy makers who would like to choose remanufacturing as a strategy to improve profitability and environmental performance given the existence of conditions under which neither might occur

r d and manufacturing production specialization in developed economies a study of the relation between technology and manufacturing production specialization in a series of developed economies is performed by means of models relating indicators of revealed symmetric comparative advantage of value added and exports to similar measures of comparative performance of r d expenditure capital intensity total factor productivity and wage costs the production and r d specialization are shown to be substantial and sticky this contrasts with the evidence of a substantial degree of convergence in the patterns of the other variables regression estimates show that although all variables play their part the impact of comparative r d efforts on production specialization is by far the strongest this impact is found to be stronger in the smaller economies and it is especially important in research intensive industries the influence of comparative wages is moreover found to be positive here suggesting the dominance of a labour skill and efficiency wage effect over a wage cost comp

technological competition and trade performance this paper estimates a demand system for oecd exports differentiated by country of origin for two isic industries non electrical machinery electrical machinery and for total manufacturing exports it develops a generalized form of the aids demand system in which research and development r d effort enters in a number of ways to affect a particular supplier s competitiveness r d activity relative to competitors affects on the one hand relative cost competitiveness and on the other hand the producer s position in the quality spectrum of products offered on international markets one of the interesting insights gained from the study is that effectiveness of r d effort can differ much across different economies it is conjectured that a country s position in an international catching up process may be partly responsible for such differences as well as labour market dynamics which link increased labour costs to cost and quality improvements

what drives business research and development r d intensity across organisation for economic co operation and development oecd countries this paper empirically investigates the potential determinants of business sector r d intensity using a panel of oecd countries for the period of 1975 2002 with data measured as five year averages estimates using a system gmm estimator controlling for endogeneity show a high degree of persistence in business sector r d expenditures tax incentives for r d have a significant and positive impact on business r d spending regardless of the specification and estimation techniques furthermore we find that expenditures for r d performed by universities are significantly positively related to business enterprise sector expenditures on r d indicating that public sector r d and private r d are complements direct r d subsidies and the high tech export share are significantly positively related to business sector r d intensity but these effects are only significant using the first differenced gmm estimator the static fixed effects results show that countries characterised by strong patent rights appear to hav

price and lead time decisions in dual channel supply chains abstract manufacturers today are increasingly adopting a dual channel to sell their products i e the traditional retail channel and an online direct channel empirical studies have shown that service quality we focus on the delivery lead time of the direct channel even goes beyond product price as one of the major factors influencing consumer acceptance of the direct channel delivery lead time has significant effects on demand profit and pricing strategy however there is scant literature addressing the decision on the promised delivery lead time of a direct channel and its impact on the manufacturer s and retailer s pricing decisions to fill this gap we examine the optimal decisions of delivery lead time and prices in a centralized and a decentralized dual channel supply chain using the two stage optimization technique and stackelberg game and analyze the impacts of delivery lead time and customer acceptance of a direct channel on the manufacturer s and retailer s pricing behaviours we analytically show that delivery lead time strongly influences the manufacturer s and the retailer s pricing strategies and profits our numerical studies reveal that the difference between the demand transfer ratios in the two channels with respect to delivery lead time and direct sale price customer acceptance of the direct channel and product type have great effects on the lead time and pricing decisions

process innovation product differentiation and channel structure strategic incentives in a duopoly in this paper we analyze the joint implications of two effects a inserting independent profit maximizing retailers into thechannel system provides buffering to the manufacturers from price competition when their products are highly substitutable and intrachannel contracts are observable as shown by mcguire and staelin 1983 under the assumption of constant marginal production costs and b lack of channel coordination results in a reduction in manufacturer s incentives to invest in efforts to reduce production costs as shown by jeuland and shugan 1983 for the case of bilateral monopoly we show that both these results are robust in the sense that the first holds even in the presence of the vertical externality of manufacturer s effort reduction in a noncoordinated channel and the second holds regardless of the degree of substitutability between the competing channel s products specifically we analyze a four stage game with two manufacturers and two retailers where the intrachannel contracts are linear and observable and manufacturers make investments in process improvements to reduce their production costs we find that the optimal channel structure decision depends on interactions between two parameters the degree of substitutability between products and the level of investments required to achieve production cost reduction these parameters represent what have been widely interpreted in the management literature as the two primary generic strategies that most organizations follow in order to gain competitive advantage cost leadership and product differentiation porter 1980 thus our analysis brings out the strategic and interdisciplinary nature of the channel structure decision that can significantly affect firm profitability our main results are as follows first we find that decentralized noncoordinated channels appear as more profitable equilibrium than integration or perfectly coordinated channels at high product substitutability even when process innovation dimension is accounted for in agreement with the literature however the range of substitutability over which decentralization is an equilibrium strategy is smaller the easier it is to reduce production costs intuitively the easier the cost reduction the larger the cost penalty that the channel incurs as a result of not coordinating investment and pricing decisions between channel members and thus smaller the range over which decentralization is an equilibrium this implies that there is an explicit tradeoff between efficiency and strategic incentives in distribution channel design second we show that decentralized manufacturers invest less in process innovation than integrated manufacturers do regardless of the structure of the competing channel and the degree of substitutability between products consequently a decentralized channel has higher costs charges higher prices and produces lower quantities than an integrated channel does moreover these differences get larger the easier the cost reduction the effect on manufacturer profits however is not that clear manufacturers make higher profits by decentralizing if products are highly substitutable inagreement with mcguire and staelin 1983 and coughlan and wernerfelt 1989 however we also find that the relative profitability of decentralization at high substitutability and of integration at low substitutability increases the easier the cost reduction moreover the range of substitutability over which decentralization is more profitable than integration is itself larger the easier the cost reduction though decentralization is an equilibrium strategy over a smallerrange thus process innovation accentuates the profit difference between integrated and decentralized channels andmakes the prisoner s dilemma situation worse in the choice of distribution channel structure finally we analyze two examples of coordinated decision making in a channel a divisional integrated system and franchising in the first case we find that decentralization can emerge as a unique and more profitable equilibrium at high product substitutability in contrast to mcguire and staelin 1983 in the second case we find that decentralization is not always a unique equilibrium and it is not always more profitable than integration in sharp contrast to the results by coughlan and wernerfelt 1989 thus franchising does not provide a sure way of achieving channel coordination when marginal production costs are not constant in sum this paper highlights the importance of simultaneously considering both the horizontal and the vertical dimensions of interorganizational relations on one hand and on the other paying attention to cross functional interactions across marketing and operational decisions to better understand the underlying incentives that shape firm and market structures conventional focus of marketing on demand side effects and of operations on cost side effects can lead to suboptimal decisions

driving forces for standardization at standardization development organizations this paper investigates sector specific driving forces for the standardization activities at national standardization organizations in the first part theoretical hypotheses concerning sector specific standardization are derived the empirical test is performed by a two step procedure first based on 19 sectors these hypotheses are tested empirically for germany the results show that rd additionally intellectual property rights play an important role furthermore standardization increases with the concentration of the enterprises up to a certain threshold where standardization activities decline again finally export intensive sectors tend to standardize more secondly because of the small data base these hypotheses are empirically tested in a pool model an international cross section approach based on 20 sectors and seven countries these results are generally in concordance with the findings of germany after a summary of the results recommendati

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

note the role of returns policies in pricing and inventory decisions for catalogue goods manufacturers often use returns policies to encourage retailers to stock and price items more aggressively we focus on the effect that such policies have on both a retailer s and a manufacturer s profits when the retailer must commit prior to the selling season to both a stocking quantity and a price at which to sell an item such a commitment is often necessary for retailers who sell primarily through catalogues

impact of government financial intervention on competition among green supply chains abstract this work analyzes the effects of governmental financial intervention on green supply chain competition using a three stage game theoretic model nash equilibrium solutions for governmental and chain member decisions are derived analytical results suggest that the government should adopt green taxation and subsidization to ensure that green profit attributed to green product production is non negative strategically low wholesale price strategies are suggested to recycled component suppliers under green subsidization to stimulate manufacturers intention of green product production under green taxation numerical results reveal that under equilibrium conditions social welfare and chain based profits improve by 27 8 and 306 6 respectively compared with the case without financial intervention

business expenditures on r d and trade performances in australia is there a link this article empirically examines the dynamic causal link between business research and development r d expenditures and trade performance in australia based on cointegration and error correction modelling granger causality tests variance decomposition and impulse response functions are used for this purpose the results show that a long run relationship exists between the trade variables and r d expenditure and a unidirectional causality run from r d expenditure to exports imports and net exports further the variance decomposition and impulse response functions confirm that a significant portion of fluctuations in the trade variables beyond the sample period is explained by r d expenditure therefore government policies that lift expenditures on business r d are shown to contribute to the narrowing of australia s chronic trade deficits

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

the impact of sharing customer returns information in a supply chain with and without a buyback policy in this paper we examine a single period problem in a supply chain in which a stackelberg manufacturer supplies a product to a retailer who faces customer returns and demand uncertainty we show that the manufacturer incurs a significant profit loss with and without a buyback policy if it fails to account for customer returns in the wholesale price decision under the assumption that the retailer is better informed than the manufacturer on customer returns information we show that without a buyback policy the retailer prefers not to share if the manufacturer overestimates while it prefers to share customer returns information if the manufacturer underestimates this information if the manufacturer offers a buyback policy we have the opposite results we also discuss incentives to share the customer returns information and some of the issues that are raised in sharing this information

agent compensation and the limits of bonding agents in positions of trust may engage in malfeasance which is difficult to detect this paper develops a model in which employers seek to control malfeasance by paying wages contingent on imperfect monitoring and agents may be required to pay entry fees or post bonds we conclude that entry fees which exceed agents assets are ineffective in controlling malfeasance as a result conditions exist in which it is optimal to pay agents more than their opportunity cost such conditions lead to an excess supply of applicants and allow employers to engage in discrimination at zero cost to themselves

the role of market forces in assuring contractual performance the conditions under which transactors can use the market repeat purchase mechanism of contract enforcement are examined increased price is shown to be a means of assuring contractual performance a necessary and sufficient condition for performance is the existence of price sufficiently above salvageable production costs so that the nonperforming firm loses a discounted steam of rents on future sales which is greater than the wealth increase from nonperformance this will generally imply a market price greater than the perfectly competitive price and rationalize investments in firm specific assets advertising investments thereby become a positive indicator of likely performance

manufacturers channel structures when selling asymmetric competing products abstract manufacturers often face the fundamental channel structure decision namely whether to sell their products directly to consumers or indirectly through an intermediary to address this issue extensive research has analyzed equilibrium channel structures for competing equally substitutable products however in reality many competing products are asymmetric in both substitutability and brand equity in this paper we study how these two asymmetric characteristics affect the equilibrium channel structures of manufacturers selling competing products following some recent studies we adopt a refined consumer demand model derived from the representative consumer utility function based on this model we examine three possible types of competition between the two supply chains cournot quantity competition bertrand price competition and bertrand cournot competition we find that brand equity substitutability as well as the type of competition all play important roles in determining the equilibrium channel structures specifically in equilibrium a manufacturer always sells directly when its rival competes on quantity moreover when there is sufficient asymmetry in either brand equity or substitutability manufacturers tend to sell directly our results demonstrate that the benefits of selling indirectly shown in previous studies depend critically on the assumptions of equally substitutable products and bertrand competition

efficiency wage models of unemployment one view h lorne carmichael persistent wage rigidity and involuntary unemployment appear to be recurrent problems in most economies what could be preventing the wage adjustment necessary to clear the labor market many recent papers claim to have found the answer in efficiency wage models this paper surveys this literature and attempts to evaluate its accomplishments it concludes that the efficiency wage models fail to explain wage rigidity or persistent involuntary unemployment persistent involuntary unemployment of workers is a recurrent problem in labor markets all over the world unemployed workers seem unable to find work even though they are willing to accept lower wages than those being paid employed workers with similar skills what could be preventing wages from adjusting to clear these markets many recent papers known collectively as the efficiency wage literature now claim to have the answer this paper will survey the efficiency wage literature and critically evaluate some of its accomplishments efficiency wage models have already been examined by yellen 1984 katz 1986 and stiglitz 1987 and have received generally favorable reviews this paper is more critical its overall conclusion is that efficiency wage models provide some useful insights into the workings of the labor market but they do not provide a satisfactory account of wage rigidity or involuntary unemployment there are at least five separate versions of the efficiency wage model they share a common structure however and this is outlined in the first section of the paper this section also attempts to relate efficiency wage models to other recent models of unemployment section ii examines and criticizes the different approaches in detail section iii evaluates the achievements of this approach and suggests some directions for future work i a general efficiency wage model efficiency wage models as the name suggests are first of all models of wages they generate unemployment by showing that firms will sometimes want to set wages at non market clearing levels it is useful to begin therefore by reviewing how wages and employment are determined in some related models in a perfectly competitive labor market the wage for each type of labor is adjusted constantly to maintain equality of supply and demand overall employment fluctuates in response to demand changes as workers move up and down their labor supply curves unemployment is voluntary in that anyone who is not working prefers that state to employment at the going wage for people of his skills as well the value of a worker s marginal product is equal to the marginal value of his leisure so there are no unexploited wage bargains between unemployed workers and firms this model is successful in predicting the long term response of wages to shifts in demand and supply but it is clear that in the short run its depiction of voluntary unemployment and flexible wages is unrealistic a natural way to generate more realism is to assume that wages are inflexible in the short run in this case a reduction in demand away from a long run equilibrium will lead to rationing of jobs by employers as they attempt to stay on their labor demand curves the unemployment here is involuntary in that the unemployed would prefer to be working at the going wage and is inefficient in that there are lost gains from trade between these workers and firms the weakness of this model is that it is silent about the mechanism that keeps wages rigid unemployed workers who offer to work for less than the fixed wage ought to find work the early implicit contract models of azariadis 1975 baily 1974 and gordon 1974 provide one explanation for wage rigidity these models introduced the idea that wages can do more than just clear the market for labor wages in an implicit contract model are used to shift the risk generated by uncertain output market conditions from risk averse workers to the risk neutral firm

cooperation among competitors a comparison of cost sharing mechanisms abstract in this paper we investigate the consequences of using outcome based versus ex ante based cost sharing mechanisms in terms of competing firms profitability and total welfare we consider two firms making a joint expenditure which can positively affect firms demand and or unit operating costs while competing in the final market by setting either price or quantity we compare two outcome based cost sharing mechanisms i e quantity proportional qp and total margin proportional tm with the more competitive fixed share fs mechanism where cost sharing is set up on an ex ante basis we show that outcome based mechanisms and even a fully collusive behavior induced by the optimal cost sharing mechanism might actually enhance total welfare as compared with the more competitive fs mechanism we also find that although the fs mechanism is never more preferable than the tm mechanism it can lead to higher profits than the qp mechanism when competition is mild these results can support firms cooperating with competitors in the choice of the cost sharing mechanism as well as provide important implications to policy makers

managing consumer returns in a competitive environment this paper investigates the pricing and restocking fee decisions of two competing firms selling horizontally differentiated products we model a duopoly facing consumers who have heterogeneous tastes for the products and who must experience a product before knowing how well it matches with their preferences the analysis yields several key insights restocking fees not only can be sustained in a competitive environment but also are more severe when consumers are less informed about product fit and when consumers place a greater importance on how well products attributes fit with their preferences we compare the competitive equilibrium prices to a scenario in which consumers are certain about their preferences and find conditions defining when consumer uncertainty results in higher equilibrium prices comparison to a monopoly setting yields a surprising result equilibrium restocking fees in a competitive environment can be higher than those charged by a monopolist this paper was accepted by jagmohan s raju marketing

sectoral patterns of technical change towards a taxonomy and a theory abstract the purpose of the paper is to describe and explain sectoral patterns of technical change as revealed by data on about 2000 significant innovations in britain since 1945 most technological knowledge turns out not to be information that is generally applicable and easily reproducible but specific to firms and applications cumulative in development and varied amongst sectors in source and direction innovating firms principally in electronics and chemicals are relatively big and they develop innovations over a wide range of specific product groups within their principal sector but relatively few outside firms principally in mechanical and instrument engineering are relatively small and specialised and they exist in symbiosis with large firms in scale intensive sectors like metal manufacture and vehicles who make a significant contribution to their own process technology in textile firms on the other hand most process innovations come from suppliers these characteristics and variations can be classified in a three part taxonomy based on firms 1 supplier dominated 2 production intensive 3 science based they can be explained by sources of technology requirements of users and possibilities for appropriation this explanation has implications for our understanding of the sources and directions of technical change firms diversification behaviour the dynamic relationship between technology and industrial structure and the formation of technological skills and advantages at the level of the firm the region and the country

a model of involuntary unemployment and wage rigidity worker incentives and the threat of dismissal this paper analyzes a model that highlights imperfect monitoring and the threat of dismissal as microeconomic underpinnings for the efficiency wage hypothesis my major innovation is to allow the rules for dismissal as well as the wage to be determined endogenously as the equilibrium of a stackelberg game played between firms and workers the key results are as follows a nontrivial equilibrium where positive output is produced must involve involuntary unemployment in that employed workers are strictly better off than are the unemployed in addition the equilibrium wage is rigid with respect to exogenous shifts in productivity

price and service co opetiton under uncertain demand and condition of used items in a remanufacturing system abstract this paper studies price and service co opetition among the two remanufacturing firms considering uncertain demand and condition of the acquired items both the firms are competing on price and service to sell their substitutable products through a common retailer and provide service directly to the end customers mathematical models are developed here for four different remanufacturing configurations and derive the equilibrium decision and profit under each of the configurations further identify the situation under which the manufacturers can select direct system and integrated system compared to the global system one of the key findings is that when demand variation increases direct system provides a better result in terms of channel profit compared to other channel configurations quantity discount with return contract mechanism is developed to coordinate the decentralized system the model is demonstrated though a numerical study an extensive sensitivity analysis is performed to examine the impact of different parameters on the model output to draw managerial insights

the optimal reverse channel choice under supply chain competition abstract this note extends the model of savaskan et al 2004 to examine the impact of supply chain competition on the optimal reverse channel choice of manufacturers who remanufacture their own products even for two identical supply chains asymmetric equilibria of strategic reverse channel choices may arise in which one prefers retailer managed collection and the other prefers manufacturer managed collection there exists a prisoner s dilemma in which the pareto optimal solution is for both manufacturers to use manufacturer managed collection but retailer managed collection is a dominant strategy

firm specific human capital as an employer discipline device the inability of employers to monitor perfectly the level of effort of their employees is a potentially serious impediment to labor market efficacy indeed a number of recent studies have concluded that this may lead to involuntary unemployment shapiro and stiglitz 1984 sparks 1986 an inefficient sectoral allocation of workers oi 1990 strand 1986 and discrimination against productively identical workers bulow and summers 1986 this paper shows that the lock in effect of firm specific human capital can help alleviate problems of worker moral hazard and thereby promote labor market performance i introduction as the surveys of akerlof yellen 1986 ch 1 carmichael 1990 lang and kahn 1990 and weiss 1990 amply illustrate the last decade witnessed the emergence of a large body of literature which falls under the general rubric of efficiency wage models of the labor market the hallmark of this approach is that some essential aspect of worker performance depends upon the wage paid by the firm much recent work bulow summers 1986 oi 1990 shapiro and stiglitz 1984 sparks 1986 and strand 1986 has considered the case in which due to monitoring difficulties worker effort depends positively upon the wage the popularity of the approach undoubtedly stems from its ability to apparently explain many stylized features of labor market behavior in an attractively simple and straightforward manner in the papers cited above shapiro and stiglitz 1984 and sparks 1987 show that labor market equilibrium can be characterized by involuntary unemployment bulow and summers 1986 demonstrate that inter alia efficiency wage models are consistent with equilibrium discrimination against productively identical agents and finally oi 1990 and strand 1986 show that efficiency wage payments can generate an inefficient sectoral allocation of workers yet recent research now suggests that the results obtained from this class of model are highly sensitive to the specific assumptions made at the outset about the completeness of contractual arrangements indeed as carmichael 1985 astutely observed if contracts can include bond payments even if financed by borrowing from imperfect capital markets the standard imperfect monitoring variant of the efficiency wage hypothesis fails to predict the emergence of equilibrium involuntary unemployment i e all workers receive their reservation utility however proponents of efficiency wage models have responded to this criticism by arguing that workers would be unwilling to post large bonds with firms due to a problem of employer moral hazard specifically workers recognize that firms may hire them in order to steal their bond payment ex post once this limitation on admissible bond payments is recognized it might then be tempting to conclude that the main results of the efficiency wage literature will re emerge in this paper i consider this issue in an environment which also allows for investment in firm specific human capital the basic structure is similar to hashimoto 1981 following macleod and malcomson 1987 1989 i assume that 1 worker performance measures are sufficiently nebulous to preclude verification by third parties and 2 as in carmichael 1983 the courts are unable to ascertain whether in the event of separation a worker quit or was fired this informational structure generates a potentially serious joint worker employer moral hazard problem workers may shirk and employers may simply hire labor in order to collect any bond payments or exit fees stipulated in the contract as emphasized by both carmichael 1989 1990 and macleod and malcomson 1987 1989 the solution to this contracting problem requires that both parties receive a non negative return from the continuation of the match relative to what can be obtained from its dissolution

two way product recovery in a closed loop supply chain with variable markup under price and quality dependent demand abstract this article considers a two way product recovery in a two echelon closed loop supply chain which comprises one manufacturer and one retailer for trading a single product the market demand of the product is linearly dependent on selling price and product quality the retailer sets the selling price with a variable markup on the wholesale price of the manufacturer the manufacturer also sets his wholesale price with a fixed markup on the production cost of the product the retailer recovers the used product in two ways he collects from consumers the used products which is a fraction of newly sold products in the forward channel he also collects the used products through an exchange offer and replaces a fraction of the collected used products by new ones we analyze the proposed model under four different decision structures decentralized nash game manufacture led and retailer led stackelberg games and centralized cooperative game structures we then compare these policies to identify the best policy we also examine the feasibility of the cooperative game through a bargaining model to examine the effects of key model parameters on the decisions we perform a sensitivity analysis for a numerical example

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

the roles of stakeholder support and procedure oriented management on asset recovery abstract as the management of returned products is fast becoming a business trend caused by pressure for compliance asset recovery is increasingly viewed as a fertile area for firms to reduce cost and improve quality environmental management is a viable approach for chinese manufacturers to respond to the escalating international quest for conserving the environment to tackle the problem of rising raw material costs and to improve product quality by analyzing returned products to reach the goals of cost reduction and product quality improvement manufacturers need to understand how asset recovery can be leveraged through procedure based practices and stakeholder support to enhance performance product type characterized by different levels of demand uncertainty and time to market may affect the outcomes of asset recovery adoption and should also be taken into account drawing on the environmental management and business logistics literature we provide empirical insights on asset recovery adoption using survey data collected from export oriented chinese manufacturers we find that asset recovery and stakeholder support are complementary in strengthening manufacturers financial performance regardless of product type in addition the performance impact of asset recovery can be substantial when manufacturers environmental management practices are less procedural allowing flexibility in the logistics management of product flows

a theory of dual labor markets with application to industrial policy discrimination and keynesian unemployment this paper develops a model of dual labor markets based on employers need to motivate workers in order to elicit effort from their workers employers may find it optimal to pay more than the going wage this changes fundamentally the character of labor markets the model is applied to a wide range of labor market phenomena it provides a coherent framework for understanding the claims of industrial policy advocates it also can provide the basis for a theory of occupational segregation and discrimination that will not be eroded by market forces finally the model provides the basis for a theory of involuntary unemployment

sectoral patterns of production and use of innovations in the uk 1945 1983 abstract based on information on more than 4000 innovations commercialised in the uk between 1945 and 1983 we analyse sectoral patterns and trends in the production and use of innovations a few core sectors chemical mechanical instruments and electronic are of major importance in the production of technology that gets used over a much wider range of sectors including those outside manufacturing similar sectoral patterns of production and use exist in the uk and usa the trend over time in the uk has been toward greater sectoral interdependence in technology and a higher share of uses outside manufacturing reflecting the growth and spread of the electronic based technological cluster any understanding of the nature determinants and dynamics of intersectoral differences in patterns of production and use of technology will require an integration into empirical and theoretical analysis of the characteristics of innovating firms

implicit contracts incentive compatibility and involuntary unemployment this paper considers the enforceability of employment contracts when employees performance cannot be verified in court so that piece rate contracts are not legally enforceable part i shows that there exists a variety of self enforcing implicit contracts modelled as perfect equilibria in a repeated game and characterizes all the wage and performance outcomes that can be implemented implementation requires a strictly positive surplus from employment the form of the contract depending on how this surplus is divided between firm and employee piece rate contracts and contracts with an informally agreed bonus can be made self enforcing but the use of severance pay and bonding does not extend the set of implementable allocations the resulting contracts resemble actual labor contracts more than do the contracts in standard principal agent models part ii analyses market equilibrium with these contracts also modelled as perfect equilibria in a repeated game and shows that many such equilibria exist unfilled vacancies and unemployed workers can co exist despite the existence of contracts that are potentially mutually beneficial for those jobs that are filled any division of the potential surplus is possible so that the market can have at the same time involuntary unemployment and vacancies that are unfilled despite filled jobs earning positive profits as a criterion for selecting equilibria a notion of renegotiation proofness is applied then either all workers are employed or all jobs filled but any division of the potential surplus is still possible the paper explores what further restrictions on beliefs give rise to a walrasian outcome in which all the potential surplus goes to the short side of the market and to an efficiency wage type outcome in which the potential surplus goes to the long side

dynamic pricing in the presence of inventory considerations research overview current practices and future directions the benefits of dynamic pricing methods have long been known in industries such as airlines hotels and electric utilities where the capacity is fixed in the short term and perishable in recent years there has been an increasing adoption of dynamic pricing policies in retail and other industries where the sellers have the ability to store inventory three factors contributed to this phenomenon 1 the increased availability of demand data 2 the ease of changing prices due to new technologies and 3 the availability of decision support tools for analyzing demand data and for dynamic pricing this paper constitutes a review of the literature and current practices in dynamic pricing given its applicability in most markets and its increasing adoption in practice our focus is on dynamic intertemporal pricing in the presence of inventory considerations

pricing policies under direct vs indirect channel competition and national vs store brand competition abstract this paper analyzes channel pricing in multiple distribution channels under competition between a national brand nb and a store brand sb where an nb can be distributed both through a direct channel e channel and an indirect channel local stores but an sb can be distributed only through an indirect channel we first explore cross brand and cross channel pricing policies formulating the problem as a nash pricing game we reach two findings 1 brand loyalty building is profitable for both an nb and an sb and 2 marketing decisions are more restrictive for an nb channel than they are for the sb channel we next assess supply chain coordination and reach two findings 1 wholesale price change does not coordinate the supply chain and 2 an appropriate combination of markup and markdown prices can achieve both supply chain coordination and a win win outcome for each channel

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

pricing and the news vendor problem a review with extensions in the newsvendor problem a decision maker facing random demand for a perishable product decides how much of it to stock for a single selling period this simple problem with its intuitively appealing solution is a crucial building block of stochastic inventory theory which comprises a vast literature focusing on operational efficiency typically in this literature market parameters such as demand and selling price are exogenous however incorporating these factors into the mode l can provide an excellent vehicle for examining how operational problems interact with marketing issues to influence decision making at the firm level in this paper we examine an extension of the newsvendor problem in which stocking quantity and selling price are set simultaneously we provide a comprehensive review that synthesizes existing results for the single period problem and develop additional results to enrich the existing knowledge base we also review and develop insight into a dynamic inventory extension of this problem and motivate the applicability of such models

the size distribution of innovating firms in the uk 1945 1983 a survey of 4 378 significant innovations shows that firms with fewer than 1 000 employees commercialized a much larger share than is indicated by their share of r and d expenditures innovations per employee have been consistently above average in firms with more than 10 000 employees and have become so in firms with fewer than 1 000 intersectoral variation in the size distribution of innovating firms can be explained as a function of r and d based technological opportunities and of technological ease of entry by user firms with principal activities outside the sector copyright 1987 by blackwell publishing ltd

efficiency wage models of unemployment a second view kevin lang and shulamit kahn efficiency wage models in which firms find it profitable to pay wages above workers reservation wages provide a promising explanation for unemployment and interindustry wage differentials one criticism of such models is they imply firms should sell jobs by requiring up front bonds from new workers however only some efficiency wage models imply this moreover firms might not require bonds for many reasons we show that moral hazard and adverse selection models together explain many labor market phenomena the efficiency wage model conforms well to empirical finding but certain anomalies suggest the need to consider rent sharing models carmichael s paper in this volume is an important contribution to the debate over the importance of efficiency wages he clearly outlines some of the deficiencies in the theory and thus points out areas needing further research nevertheless his conclusions are far too negative he greatly exaggerates the theoretical weakness of the efficiency wage model and gives insufficient recognition to the empirical implications generated by this model and to tests of these implications i shirking models there is direct empirical evidence that shirking is a serious problem for firms firms spend significant sums monitoring workers levine 1987 reviews the evidence that worker shirking is widespread and costly the evidence in burroway 1979 and mars 1982 also demonstrates the importance of shirking and stealing carmichael s primary argument against shirking models is that if the payment of efficiency wages to deter shirking led to an excess supply of workers workers would buy their jobs by posting bonds since we do not observe workers posting bonds he concludes that firms do not pay efficiency wages either given the importance of shirking the absence of market clearing bonds needs explaining one explanation is that the market has found some reasonable substitute for bonds such as deferred wage payments it is theoretically feasible to substitute deferred wage payments for up front bonds as noted by akerlof and katz 1989 however the empirical evidence of industries with deferred payments i e where low beginning wages are balanced by high subsequent wages is mixed dickens and katz 1987b krueger and summers 1988 and abraham and farber 1987 indicate that industries which pay high wages to high tenure workers tend to pay high wages to low tenure workers on the other hand high wage industries also tend to have steeper earnings profiles which may be evidence of deferred earnings in these industries as shapiro and stiglitz 1984 note a second possible explanation for the absence of market clearing bonding is that bonding gives firms an incentive to fire workers immediately upon collecting their bonds however this explanation assumes that a firm will immediately fire every worker who posts a bond if there are any reputation costs at all some firms sometimes will not fire bond posting workers and we should observe some bonding yet with finite length contracts there must be some reputation costs because otherwise firms would never pay workers in the last period thus firm incentives to cheat and fire workers cannot explain the complete absence of bonding clearly the absence of market clearing bonding is not fully understood and further theoretical work is needed dickens katz lang and summers 1989 review a wide variety of possible reasons that bond posting is limited the important point is that there are many potential reasons for limited bonding other than the absence of efficiency wages on the other hand the lack of bonding despite the importance of shirking does not demonstrate that firms pay efficiency wages there may be reputation or other costs to the worker caught shirking even in the absence of bonding as dickens katz lang and summers 1989 demonstrate in the absence of bonding whether paying efficiency wages dominates relying solely on increased monitoring depends on the parameters of the model and is therefore an empirical issue

employment relations in dual labor markets it s nice work if you can get it jobs in big firms command higher wages i examine four theories that could explain this relation first large firms incur higher fixed employment costs including more specific training second monitoring costs are greater in big firms and can be spread by hiring more productive workers third large firms may choose to pay efficiency wages to deter shirking finally large employers organize production around teams and pay higher wages to get workers who comply with the discipline of team production the dispersion of wages and working conditions in the u s labor market reflect the heterogeneity of jobs employment relations and individuals

persistent wage dispersion and involuntary unemployment it is costly for firms offers to workers to be turned down both because firms must make additional offers and making offers is costly and because capital is underused or unused provided that workers apply to at least two firms for jobs there will be wage dispersion in equilibrium and some workers will randomly fail to receive any wage offers firms in the same industry with access to the same technology may nevertheless choose different levels of capital intensity firms using capital intensive technologies will pay higher wages

efficient supply contracts for fashion goods with forecast updating and two production modes we examine the problem of developing supply contracts that encourage proper coordination of forecast information and production decisions between a manufacturer and distributor of high fashion seasonal products operating in a two mode production environment the first production mode is relatively cheap but requires a long lead time while the second is expensive but offers quick turnaround we focus on contracts of the form w1 w2 b wherewi is the wholesale price offered for production modei andb is a return price offered for items left over at the end of the season we find that such a contract can coordinate the manufacturer and distributor to act in the best interest of the channel the pricing conditions needed to ensure an efficient solution vary depending on the degree of demand forecast improvement between periods and the manufacturer s access to forecast information we also examine whether these conditions ensure a pareto optimal solution with respect to two traditional production settings

low carbon product selection with carbon tax and competition effects of the power structure abstract this paper considers product selection strategies of two competitive firms in the presence of carbon tax optimal strategies are developed for product selection of the firm with two game structures namely the nash game and the stackelberg game by which the paper conducts an analytical examination of the effect of power structure on the product selection strategy of the firm over various levels of carbon tax rate the critical managerial findings derived with the studies are as follows i two competitive firms will always adopt the same product strategy with the nash pricing game regardless of the carbon tax rate which is in contrast to that they will adopt a differentiated product strategy over the low carbon tax rates with the stackelberg pricing game ii two competitive firms will both select the common or low carbon product with randomness over the middle carbon tax rates with the nash product selection game which is contrast to that the randomness in their product selections is removed with the stackelberg product selection game which leads to an existence of the pure strategy stackelberg equilibrium for their product selection strategies over the middle carbon tax rates the inherent mechanisms leading to these essential differences are also discussed in the paper

price competition and co operation in a duopoly closed loop supply chain abstract this paper studies co operation and competition issues in a closed loop supply chain the supply chain comprises of two manufacturers who compete for selling their new product as well as for collection of the used products for remanufacturing through a common retailer to analyze the situation mathematical models are developed here for three different cases i non co operative system ii channel co operative system and iii global co operative system for each of the cases we have characterized optimal wholesale price and fraction of collection of used product to draw more managerial insights we also examine the sensitivity of various parameters such as market size acquisition cost and transfer price on total channel profit a numerical study is carried out to illustrate the model and the results reveal that global co operative system is the best among all the three cases considered here weighted shapely value mechanism is used for sharing of surplus generated in the system due to channel co operation

direct marketing indirect profits a strategic analysis of dual channel supply chain design the advent of e commerce has prompted many manufacturers to redesign their traditional channel structures by engaging in direct sales the model conceptualizes the impact of customer acceptance of a direct channel the degree to which customers accept a direct channel as a substitute for shopping at a traditional store on supply chain design the customer acceptance of a direct channel can be strong enough that an indepent manufacturer would open a direct channel to compete with its own retailers here direct marketing is used for strategic channel control purposes even though it is inefficient on its own and surprisingly it can profit the manufacturer even when so direct sales occur specifically we construct a price setting game between a manufacturer and its independent retailer direct marketing which indirectly increases the flow of profits through the retail channel helps the manufacturer improve overall profitability by reducing the degree of inefficient price double marginalization while operated by the manufacturer to constrain the retailer s pricing behavior the direct channel may not always be detrimental to the retailer because it will be accompanied by a wholesale price reduction this combination of manufacturer pull and push can benefit the retailer in equilibrium finally we show that the mere threat of introducing the direct channel can increase the manufacturer s negotiated share of cooperative profits even if price efficiency is obtained by using other business practices

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

channel coordination when retailers compete this paper explores channel coordination by a manufacturer that sells through competing retailers and that treats these retailers equally as required by the robinson patman act the authors show that in general there exists no single two part tariff with a constant per unit charge that will duplicate the behavioral results i e prices quantities and channel profits that are obtained by a vertically integrated system that is the channel cannot be coordinated except in the trivial cases of identical or noncompeting retailers however an appropriately specified quantity discount schedule will enable the channel to earn the same profits generated by a vertically integrated system conditions are derived under which a manufacturer will prefer to offer various two part tariffs with constant per unit charges instead of the channel coordinating quantity discount schedule the authors also establish the existence of a menu of two part tariffs that mimics all results of a vertically integrated system however only under stringent conditions will retailers select the appropriate tariff from the menu when these conditions are not satisfied the channel is worse off than in the case of a single second best tariff it is also demonstrated that under a wide range of parametric values the manufacturer will prefer to offer the second best two part tariff rather than a menu of two part tariffs that could maximize channel profits

the role of innovation in bilateral oecd trade performance this paper tests an empirical model of the determinants of bilateral oecd trade with particular emphasis on the role of innovation variation in the relationship across countries and sectors is analysed two innovation proxies and actual data on innovations are used a positive relationship is found between relative innovation and bilateral trade performance at an aggregate level and for a number of manufacturing sectors sectors are also categorized as either net users or producers of innovations differences in innovation appear to have more of an impact on trade performance for the net producers of innovations than the net users of innovations

innovation and trade performance in the united kingdom a popular explanation for the u k s poor trade performance in the postwar period is that insufficient attention was paid to the quality of goods offered to consumers the authors explore the role of both price and quality factors in determining the net trade balances of a number of u k manufacturing and service industries particular attention is paid to the role of innovation used empirically as a proxy for product improvement the findings show considerable support for the view that an advanced industrial country like britain needs to continually upgrade its products to avoid erosion of its domestic and international market shares

science and technology in united states foreign trade economists generally believe that modern science technology such as the presence of scientists and engineers or research and development is a central factor in the comparative advantage of advanced industrial nations however most discussion of this topic rests on cross industry regressions which leamer and bowen i981 do not provide a valid indication of factor abundance so the overall role of science still remains to be established in addition much remains to be known about the role of different facets of science and innovation in the process of generating comparative advantage there are two fundamentally different ways of understanding technological differences between countries one point of view adopted in the standard neoclassical theory of international trade assumes all countries are on the same production function under these circumstances relative factor abundance determines the factor services which a country exports or imports within this perspective one can make progress towards an understanding of the role of science and technology in international trade by dividing science into many highly specific narrowly defined input factors calculations can then determine the relative abundance of those inputs associated with science technology versus other input factors in a given country or the relative abundance of different elements within the broad area of overall science technology quite another procedure assumes there are substantial differences in the production possibilities faced by different countries for example krugman i979 recently argued that advantages in innovation and lags in the diffusion of knowledge are the basic influences which permit incomes to be higher in the industrialised world than in developing nations this view illustrates the potential economic significance of innovation in advanced countries since the generation of new technologies in industrialised countries and their diffusion to the rest of the world then essentially determines world income distribution and world economic development however empirical implementation of the diffusion viewpoint requires data for many countries which greatly limits the number of facets of technology which can be considered since the present paper is centrally concerned with the effect which a wide variety of technological elements has on international trade we choose to select a framework within which the ample data available on different aspects of technology in the united states can be utilised the first view of technological

strategic introduction of the marketplace channel under spillovers from online to offline sales abstract in recent years the increasing prevalence of online retailing has given rise to a novel e channel the marketplace in which manufacturers sell their products directly to consumers by paying fees to e tailers this e channel unlike the conventional reseller e channel endows manufacturers with absolute control over prices which helps protect brick and mortar channels especially in the presence of different types of spillovers from online to offline sales however the marketplace channel is nevertheless not used in practice in some instances as a result of the e tailer s costly platform fees and the manufacturer s inefficiency in direct retail sales these different attitudes raise key questions of whether and under what conditions the marketplace channel should be introduced in addition to the reseller channel in this paper we study these problems by measuring the combined effects of the online spillover the platform fee and the manufacturer s retailing inefficiency we demonstrate that the manufacturer s willingness to employ the marketplace channel increases and the e tailer s willingness to do so decreases in the level of spillovers when combining the two we find that a pareto improvement can be achieved under a moderate spillover we also present an interesting insight that the introduction of the marketplace channel fundamentally changes the effects of the spillover on the e tailer while merely strengthening those on the manufacturer moreover a higher platform fee does not necessarily incentivize the e tailer to join the marketplace and the manufacturer s retailing inefficiency may either benefit or harm the e tailer depending on the size of the platform fee

coordinating a socially responsible closed loop supply chain with product recycling abstract this paper analyzes the effects of corporate social responsibility csr and explores channel coordination in a socially responsible manufacturer retailer closed loop supply chain clsc by considering two areas profit maximization and social responsibility through product recycling the manufacturer is socially responsible and exhibits it by recycling of used product that it collects through the retailer using the reverse channel it is found that the channel s non profit maximizing motive through csr practice generates higher profit margin than the profit maximizing objective and revenue sharing contract resolves channel conflict recycling is a key factor for the wholesale price and hence pure profit of the manufacturer because variation of it may lead to decrement or increment even negative wholesale price thus there must be a limit of recycling for optimal benefit for best channel performance the manufacturer provides the retailer all revenues that it generates through recycling in the form of reward thus csr is purely a costly endeavor to the manufacturer moreover unlike the pure profit maximizing supply chain csr has the ability to vary surplus profit share

a generalized ordering and recovery policy for reusable items this paper deals with a joint eoq and epq model in which a stationary demand is satisfied by recovered products as well as newly purchased products it is assumed that a fixed proportion of the used products are collected from customers and later recovered for reuse we generalize the p r policy in the literature by treating the sequence of orders for newly purchasing products and setups for recovery process within a cycle as a decision variable through example problems we illustrate the validity of the model and solution procedure developed

the impact of technological innovation on international trade patterns the evidence reconsidered abstract this paper presents some new evidence in relation to the role of technical change in particular industrial innovation on the international competitiveness of the various oecd countries its originality consists primarily of a using a technology output indicator to measure technological performance b presenting and comparing various measures of trade and technological performance for each individual oecd country with the exception of iceland c analysing at a relatively high level of product industry disaggregation the relationship between export performance and technological performance at the same time the very limited scope of the paper has to be emphasized a the analysis is purely static all the evidence presented relates to one year 1977 b most of the results obtained are preliminary and should be further substantiated by more detailed empirical and theoretical research c as a consequence little attention has been paid to policy implications which it was felt could only be discussed properly in a later stage the paper consists of four sections a brief review of the state of the art section 1 a discussion on definitions of technology intensity section 2 the development of the best technology output indicator section 3 and the empirical analysis itself section 4 the following most important results emerge from these various sections a there are serious shortcomings in using average technology intensity as bench mark for classifying products or industries in technology intensive or nontechnology intensive categories b there is a substantial difference between technology intensity as measured on the basis of a technology input proxy rd c yet as between countries the most traditional output and input indicators the number of patents granted and the amount spent on rd d foreign patenting in particular foreign patenting in the united states figs 1 and 2 section 3 is a more reliable technology output proxy than domestic patenting e in terms of technological comparative advantage as opposed to technology intensity it is the small oecd countries as opposed to the large ones which seem to base their trade comparative advantage on technological comparative performance table 7 section 4 1 f at the individual industry level it is found that i for most technology intensive industries defined however in a less restrictive way than us r d intensities a close relation exists between technological performance and export performance and ii that as compared to other country specific resource variables technological performance is the most important trade explanatory variable its elasticity increasing with the technology intensity of industries tables 11 and 12 section 4 2 space constraints prevented us from presenting the data in relation to the inter industry and inter country analysis these can however be obtained from the author

foreign patenting in the u s as a technology indicator the case of norway abstract foreign patenting in the u s has been considered to be a useful technology indicator in comparisons between countries in order to shed light on this topic this paper will try to explain foreign patenting in the u s by way of data for one country norway a crucial question is what role is played by exports in explaining the foreign patent activity is the u s patenting just an indicator of the export performance or is it the other way around that technology measured by foreign patent activity is an important trade explanatory variable the first part of this paper deals with the relationship between norwegian u s patenting and export to the u s by way of time series analysis on data from 1883 to 1980 then some more detailed analysis are done on industry level data from 1920 and from 1960 1980 an hypothesis is further tested for the possible relationship between foreign u s patenting and the international business cycles finally a detailed but tentative analysis is done on firm level data for the years 1969 1980 the results lend partial support to the assumption that foreign u s patent activity reflects innovative activity in the country where the patents originated a major advantage in using foreign patenting in the u s as a technology indicator is that this type of data in general seems to be of a higher quality than domestic patent data

determinants of the structure of u s foreign trade 1958 1976 abstract the heckscher ohlin model with three direct factor inputs is borne out for u s net exports of manufactures in annual cross section regressions for 1958 1976 the coefficient on unskilled labor became significantly more negative over the period and there is evidence that the negative sign on physical capital may reflect the inclusion of natural resource industries further analysis based upon 1960 and 1970 census years suggests the importance as well of skill and technological variables calculations of the total factor requirements of u s trade uphold the leontief paradox for 1958 but not for 1972

trade in and save a two period closed loop supply chain game with price and technology dependent returns abstract consumers evaluate the convenience of changing their products according to the price paid as well as the technology quality level when the consumers wish to capitalize the products residual value they should return them as early as possible accordingly we develop a model of closed loop supply chain clsc where consumers seek to gain as much as possible from their returns and the return rate is a function of both price and quality we model a two period stackelberg game to capture the dynamic aspects of a clsc where the manufacturer is the channel leader we investigate who namely manufacturer or retailer should collect the products in the market thus we identify the best clsc structure to adopt when the return rate is both price and quality dependent our results demonstrate that it is always worthwhile for companies to collect products and adopt an active return approach for returns we investigate the effect of retail competition in both forward and backward channels and show the impact of eliminating the double marginalization on market outcomes

self enforcing contracts shirking and life cycle incentives he labor market is a rich and complicated place when a worker takes a job he expects to earn a wage but will also care about rates of wage growth fringe benefits levels of risk retirement practices pensions promotion and layoff rules seniority rights and grievance procedures in return the worker must give up some time but he is also asked to upgrade his skills train other workers provide effort and ideas and defer to authority in questions of how his time is spent great changes are occurring in the way labor market institutions such as these are modelled central to the new approach is the concept of a self enforcing implicit contract this is the latest in a series of variations on the ideas of azariadis 1975 baily 1974 and gordon 1974 and is one of the more exciting new developments in the theory of labor markets this essay will outline this approach and evaluate some of its accomplishments the ideas will be presented in the context of an incentive model that is of some independent interest the model was introduced by becker and stigler 1974 and was extended by lazear 1979 to account for wage growth and mandatory retirement in these papers the workers retire at a fixed age lending the name life cycle incentives to the approach more recently shapiro and stiglitz 1984 have used a version without a fixed retirement date to account for unemployment this version is often called the shirking model these models have generated some controversy but much of it can be resolved when the models are presented in the framework of self enforcing contracts in fact this simple incentive model can do even more it can provide a rationale for competitive hierarchies where firms place their workers in competition with

governance mechanisms of dual channel reverse supply chains with informal collection channel abstract the existence of informal collection channel has been a serious problem for reverse supply chain management in china informal collectors interrupt the normal order of end of life product collection to assess this problem this article explores governance mechanisms of the current recycling system in practical operations from the perspectives of both governments and enterprises based on the respective characteristics of two collection channels i e formal and informal we establish a stackelberg game model to describe and analyze the dual channel collection supply chain in which consumer preference to collection channels is considered based on the benchmark model three governance mechanisms set by both governments and formal collectors are introduced and analyzed when deriving optimal decisions and certain parameter properties this study demonstrates that both governments and collectors can implement appropriate governance mechanisms to control or utilize the informal collection channel under different circumstances on one hand on the other hand governance mechanisms set by the government are unenforceable to control informal collection under certain situations the effectiveness of governance mechanisms is determined based on different channel preferences of consumers and the economic value of the waste electrical and electronic equipment weee

complementarities of trade advantage and trade competitiveness measures the complementarities of trade advantage and trade competitiveness measures for agro food trade of five central european ce 5 countries with the european union are analysed the stability and duration of the trade measures over time is investigated by the survival analysis using the nonparametric kaplan meier product limit estimator and the consistency test between the trade measures is conducted by the stratified cox proportional hazard model the ce 5 countries experienced a greater number of products with relative trade disadvantages and greater significance of one way imports unlike the czech republic poland slovakia and slovenia hungary experienced relative trade advantages rtas for bulk raw commodities processed intermediates and horticulture with the greatest significance of successful quality competition and one way exports and the lowest significance of unsuccessful price and unsuccessful quality competition the duration of rtas is longer than the duration for the successful trade co

trade and the impact of innovations and standards the case of germany and the uk the effects of patents as indicators for innovations and standards on german trade performance are analysed in general and german british trade in detail the latter analysis goes a step further than the approach of swann et al 1996 and is based on a broader and more detailed database the results show that germany s export performance can primarily be explained by its innovative capacity and only to a small extent by its strength in standards furthermore the results underscore the common view of the trade fostering effect of international standards while idiosyncratic standards have ambiguous effects on exports

equilibrium wage dispersion and interindustry wage differentials this paper develops a search theoretic explanation of interindustry wage differentials given coordination problems in the labor market the probability of filling a vacancy is an increasing function of the wage offered in equilibrium firms that find vacancies more costly will offer higher wages the model thus explains the persistence of interindustry wage differentials and their correlation with industry average capital labor ratio and profitability additionally the model predicts that high wage firms will receive more applications per job opening and that wages in the labor market will behave as strategic complements

the role of technology in market shares dynamics the paper presents the estimation of an empirical model of market share dynamics for five industrialized countries and 18 industries the emphasis is put on the importance of non price factors of competitiveness whereas most traditional explanations rest on the influence of relative prices among the former type of factor the role of variables reflecting technological advantage is privileged in particular the role of innovations has received considerable attention in the literature on international trade as well as the literature on endogenous growth in this spirit the paper introduces patent counts and investment as explanatory variables for the export market share the results show that non price variables have an important impact on the determinations of long run competitiveness

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

involuntary unemployment in dynamic contract equilibria in this paper the set of bilateral wage contracts in a dynamic model with observable effort is characterized our first result demonstrates that bond payments and severance pay do not increase the size of the set of incentive compatible contracts second we show that unobservable effort can lead to voluntary unemployment this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

a supplier s optimal quantity discount policy under asymmetric information in the supply chain literature an increasing body of work studies how suppliers can use incentive schemes such as quantity discounts to influence buyers ordering behaviour thus reducing the supplier s and the total supply chain s costs various functional forms for such incentive schemes have been proposed but a critical assumption always made is that the supplier has full information about the buyer s cost structure we derive the optimal quantity discount policy under asymmetric information and compare it to the situation where the supplier has full information

when should a manufacturer set its direct price and wholesale price in dual channel supply chains abstract applying an observable delay game framework developed in noncooperative game theory we investigate the timing problem concerning when a manufacturer managing dual channel supply chains consisting of a retail channel and a direct channel should post its wholesale price and direct price conventionally operational research models describing dual channel supply chains examine price competition where the retailer and the manufacturer simultaneously determine the retail and direct prices respectively in contrast to this conventional setting our model demonstrates that such simultaneous price competition never arises if the manufacturer and retailer can choose not only the level of the price but also the timing of pricing if the manufacturer sets the direct price after setting the wholesale price to the retailer the retailer accelerates the timing of retail pricing prior to the direct price setting by the manufacturer our findings suggest that the manufacturer should post the direct price before or upon but not after setting the wholesale price for the retailer this upfront posting of the direct price not only constitutes the subgame perfect nash equilibrium of the noncooperative game between channel members but also maximizes the profits for a manufacturer employing multichannel sales strategies

an industry equilibrium analysis of downstream vertical integration this paper investigates the effect of product substitutability on nash equilibrium distribution structures in a duopoly where each manufacturer distributes its goods through a single exclusive retailer which may be either a franchised outlet or a factory store static linear demand and cost functions are assumed and a number of rules about players expectations of competitors behavior are examined it is found that for most specifications product substitutability does influence the equilibrium distribution structure for low degrees of substitutability each manufacturer will distribute its product through a company store for more highly competitive goods manufacturers will be more likely to use a decentralized distribution system this article was originally published in marketing science volume 2 issue 2 pages 161 191 in 1983

managing new and differentiated remanufactured products we study a firm that makes new products in the first period and uses returned cores to make remanufactured products along with new products in future periods the remanufactured product is differentiated from the new product so the firm needs to choose differentiated prices we analyze the monopoly environment in two period multi period three four and five and infinite planning horizons and characterize the optimal remanufacturing and pricing strategy for the firm in the process we identify remanufacturing savings thresholds that determine the production and pricing strategy for the firm among other results we find counter to intuition that in a finite horizon multi period setting the optimal policy is not necessarily monotone in remanufacturing savings

competitive advantage of qualified weee recyclers through epr legislation abstract most of waste appliances in china are handled by unqualified recyclers rather than by qualified ones equipped with advanced but costly technology to address this problem china implements a series of take back legislations in the framework of extended producer responsibility epr with a self financing subsidy scheme to analyze the performance of the legislations we develop a two period model with a selling period run by a manufacturer and a recycling period conducted by two recyclers we show that the self financing condition gives an upper limit for the subsidy we also show that this limit is not monotone in the recyclers competitiveness difference and there may be a gap between the upper limit and the optimal subsidy that maximizes the social welfare i e a larger subsidy does not necessarily render a larger welfare further we numerically show that the legislations improve the environment performance but decrease the total profits of the manufacturer and recyclers interestingly the legislations may or may not decrease the consumer surplus

vertical strategic interaction implications for channel pricing strategy this paper examines two strategic pricing decisions within channels using foresight i e price leadership and considering category implications i e product line pricing are price leadership and product line pricing always the best pricing strategies for a channel member if not when does this occur and why by investigating these questions we address some major concerns of both marketing practitioners and scholars interested in channel management issues in addition this study provides an indepth discussion on why previous analytic studies produced answers to these questions that depend upon the choice of the form of demand functions as such this study should significantly resolve the debate among analytic marketing modelers about the right demand specification at the core of our discussion lies the concept of vertical strategic interaction which is defined in terms of the direction of a channel member s reaction to the actions of its channel partner within a given demand structure specifically if a channel member s best reaction is to reduce its margin when its channel partner increases its margin the type of vertical strategic interaction is referred to as vertical strategic substitutability vss if the best reaction is to increase the margin the environment is referred to as vertical strategic complementarity vsc if the best reaction is no margin change it is referred to as vertical strategic independence vsi using a game theoretic approach we demonstrate that these three types of vertical strategic interactions represent a key driving force for optimal decisions on channel price leadership and product line pricing our investigation involves mathematical analyses of an industry model composed of two manufacturers selling competing products both carried by two competing retailers as such the model allows for retailer product line pricing as well as manufacturer and retailer level competition in addition this general model can be used to analyze three more restrictive industry settings often found in the channels literature i e a bilateral monopoly jeuland and shugan jeuland abel steven m shugan 1983 managing channel profits marketing sci 2summer 239 72 two competing manufacturers selling through competing franchised retailers mcguire and staelin mcguire timothy w richard staelin 1983 an industry equilibrium analysis of downstream vertical integration marketing sci 2spring 161 92 and two competing manufacturers selling through one common retailer using product line pricing choi choi s chan 1991 price competition in a channel structure with a common retailer marketing sci 10fall 271 96 unlike many other channel studies most of our analyses are performed without assuming particular functional forms of demand curves thus this paper provides greater assurance that the insights from this stream of research are broadly applicable not only across industry structures but also across demand conditions the paper starts out by defining three different rules for how prices are set the manufacturer uses foresight the retailer uses foresight and neither channel member uses foresight we then show a one to one mapping between the type of vertical strategic interaction and the optimality of channel price leadership specifically a channel member finds it profitable to be a price leader for vss but prefers to be a follower for vsc for vsi channel members are indifferent to the channel price leadership issue as it has no effect on channel member profits we also show that there exist conditions under which a retailer might see a reduction in profits when it changes its policy from non product line pricing to product line pricing such conditions arise when the retailer is not a price leader and the environment is characterized by vss or vsc at a more general level this study suggests not only the value but also the cost to a firm for using superior knowledge i e foresight and or product line pricing in making strategic marketing decisions in this way ignorance can be bliss we also explore the link between demand characteristics and the three types of vertical strategic interaction we show that the type of vertical strategic interaction present in a given environment is closely related with the convexity of the demand curve and the level of demand for a given price interestingly we find that linearity of demand is not a necessary condition for any of the three types of vertical strategic demand function consequently in evaluating the robustness of analytic analyses it may be more important to determine the type of vertical strategic interaction assumed instead of whether the demand is linear or nonlinear finally our results are limited to situations where the channels are not coordinated and the retailer s precommitment to particular pricing policy and decision is credible although such situations still capture a significant portion of reality we acknowledge that the insights from this study might not be applicable in all situations

closed loop supply chains under reward penalty mechanism retailer collection and asymmetric information abstract being motivated by the issue of waste electrical and electronic equipment weee collection we consider a contract design problem for a manufacturer with entrusting the collection of weee to a retailer however the manufacturer has asymmetric information on the collection effort level of the retailer this paper designs an information screening contract for the manufacturer to obtain the information of collection effort level and the optimal decision making with several properties of contract parameters are derived the results indicate that the manufacturer would offer lower wholesale price and higher buy back price for the h type retailer while charge more franchise fee to the h type retailer considering the government intervention reward penalty mechanism rpm is developed to stimulate the asymmetric information closed loop supply chain clsc we also analyze the impacts of rpm by comparing the cases whether or not rpm is implemented the comparison results show that the rpm can lower the wholesale price and retail price meanwhile raise buy back price and collection quantity finally several numerical studies are conducted for more managerial insights

a comparative analysis of greening policies across supply chain structures abstract in this paper we examine an apparel serial supply chain whose players initiate product greening we consider situations in which the players cooperate or act individually our problem is motivated by recent developments in the supply chains of global apparel players we build game theoretic models and show how greening levels prices and profits are influenced by channel structures we also study the impact of greening costs and consumer sensitivity towards green apparels we propose a two part tariff contract to coordinate the green channel our key contribution lies in the model of decision making of various supply chain structures and analyzing its impact on the players and supply chain the problem throws interesting insights into the strategies of apparel players and their key decisions

decentralized decision making and protocol design for recycled material flows reverse logistics networks often consist of several tiers with independent members competing at each tier this paper develops a methodology to examine the individual entity behavior in reverse production systems we consider two tiers in the network collectors and processors the collectors determine individual flow functions that relate the flow they provide each processor to the overall vector of prices that the processors determine because the exact final prices are unknown each collector solves a robust optimization formulation where the prices paid by the processors are assumed to be within given ranges the processors compete for the flow from the collectors until the nash equilibrium is reached in this competitive tier which sets the vector of prices to be offered to the collectors to demonstrate the approach a numerical example is given for a prototypical recycling network

technical note optimal product acquisition pricing and inventory management for systems with remanufacturing acquisition of used products cores is central to the success of remanufacturing programs for companies at the same time dynamic pricing strategies have been adopted in various industries to better balance supply and customer demand in this paper we study the integration of these two aspects of operations together with inventory management for a production remanufacturing firm we develop a periodic review single product inventory system with price dependent customer demand the product return in each period is random but can be actively controlled by the firm s acquisition effort the firm aims to maximize its total discounted profit over a finite planning horizon by implementing optimal production remanufacturing product acquisition and pricing strategies we first show that with an exogenous selling price the optimal production remanufacturing disposal policy is simple and characterized by three state independent parameters the optimal acquisition effort is decreasing in the aggregate inventory level of serviceable product and cores nevertheless when pricing is an endogenous decision we find that the optimal policy becomes much more complicated and its control parameters are state dependent the optimal selling price is decreasing whereas the optimal acquisition effort is increasing in the serviceable product inventory level and both decisions decrease with the aggregate inventory level

strategic interactions between channel structure and demand enhancing services in this paper we investigate how opportunities to invest in demand enhancing services for a product line affect the interactions between a manufacturer and her dealer many demand enhancing services e g after sales support warranty repair etc can be provided either by the manufacturer or they can be delegated to the dealer we first show that when a manufacturer retains control of such services the dealer will have an incentive to choose a decentralized organizational structure as a means of committing to non product line pricing since this will encourage the manufacturer to invest more in demand enhancing services we then consider a game that is played between the manufacturer and the dealer in which the dealer chooses between centralized product line pricing or decentralized non product line pricing operations and the manufacturer chooses between insourcing the services i e providing them herself or outsourcing them to the dealer we find that the equilibrium depends on which if any channel partner has the ability to act as a stackelberg leader if the dealer can move first then the equilibrium will always be outsourced services and centralized dealer operations however if either the manufacturer moves first or if neither partner can move first then the equilibrium can be either insourced services and decentralized dealer operations or outsourced service and centralized dealer operations

choosing the right exchange old for new programs for durable goods with a rollover abstract by offering to trade in one unit of old product at a discounted price while selling new products exchange old for new eon programs have been considered efficient ways of expanding market for durable goods starting from the choice behavior of customers this paper studies optimal pricing and remanufacturing decisions for firms that adopt the eon program specifically considering a supply chain that consists of one manufacturer and one retailer we investigate two business models i in the manufacturer initiated scenario the manufacturer launches an eon program and owns all the old items that are returned he remanufactures all or a portion of the old items and sells them to a secondary market ii in the retailer initiated scenario any old items that are returned belong to the retailer she remanufactures the old items and sells them to the secondary market an in depth comparison between the optimal decisions in the two models is conducted in this paper we show it is possible that a firm may be even more profitable from being a free rider instead of offering an eon program by himself herself based on a centralized supply chain as a benchmark an exchange discount sharing contract is proposed to coordinate the supply chain and to improve the overall welfare of customers numerical experiments are conducted to show the profit impact for the supply chain members which uncover some interesting managerial insights for the proper adoption of the most efficient eon programs

optimal return and rebate mechanism in a closed loop supply chain game abstract within a closed loop supply chain clsc framework we study several consumer return behaviors for the used products which are based on the product prices and rebates consumers evaluate the rebate they receive as well as the price of the new product before deciding whether to dump a return therefore the number of used products returned is examined under two types of rebates a fixed rebate and a variable rebate we search for the optimal rebate mechanism and find that the clsc profits are higher under an variable rebate policy this finding justifies the industry practices that employ a rebate mechanism based on both the value and the price of used item we offer two types of solution concepts to the clsc games open loop stackelberg solution and markov perfect stackelberg solution which are commonly employed in the dynamic games literature while we mainly employ markovian equilibrium we also allow firms to utilize open loop strategies so as to assess the impact of precommitment on the market outcomes therefore we offer a comprehensive analysis of all possible market equilibrium solutions under different strategic considerations and the commitment deliberations we show that under the fixed rebate regime open loop solution coincides with markov perfect solution furthermore we show how consumer return behavior impacts the dynamic nature of the game we find that the time frame is irrelevant if firms offer a fixed rebate in contrast the game will be fully dynamic when firms offer a variable rebate

when is servitization a profitable competitive strategy abstract although servitization has emerged as a new competitive strategy for manufacturers there has been little research about product level servitization we investigate the competition between two channels one separately providing both goods and services and the other providing inseparable servitized goods through a game theoretic approach two critical parameters to understand competition between the two channels will be proposed 1 service dependency a degree of dependency of physical goods upon services and 2 channel substitutability a degree of substitution between conventional channels and servitized one the study reveals that the servitization strategy is a better choice for a manufacturer selling physical goods only when the goods require a higher level of service i e high service dependency and when the competition between the two channels is more severe i e high channel substitutability in addition obtaining cost efficiency is found to be an important factor to achieve higher competitive advantage over the other channel