the allocation of inventory risk in a supply chain push pull and advance purchase discount contracts while every firm in a supply chain bears supply risk the cost of insufficient supply some firms may even with wholesale price contracts completely avoid inventory risk the cost of unsold inventory with a push contract there is a single wholesale price and the retailer by ordering his entire supply before the selling season bears all of the supply chain s inventory risk a pull contract also has a single wholesale price but the supplier bears the supply chain s inventory risk because only the supplier holds inventory while the retailer replenishes as needed during the season examples include vendor managed inventory with consignment and drop shipping an advance purchase discount has two wholesale prices a discounted price for inventory purchased before the season and a regular price for replenishments during the selling season advance purchase discounts allow for intermediate allocations of inventory risk the retailer bears the risk on inventory ordered before the season while the supplier bears the risk on any production in excess of that amount this research studies how the allocation of inventory risk via these three types of wholesale price contracts impacts supply chain efficiency the ratio of the supply chain s profit to its maximum profit it is found that the efficiency of a single wholesale price contract is considerably higher than previously thought as long as firms consider both push and pull contracts in other words the literature has exaggerated the value of implementing coordinating contracts i e contracts that achieve 100 efficiency such as buy backs or revenue sharing because coordinating contracts are compared against an inappropriate benchmark often just a push contract furthermore if firms also consider advance purchase discounts which are also simple to administer then the coordination of the supply chain and the arbitrary allocation of its profit is possible several limitations of advance purchase discounts are discussed

optimal pricing and return policies for perishable commodities this paper considers the pricing decision faced by a producer of a commodity with a short shelf or demand life a hierarchical model is developed and the results of the single period inventory model are used to examine possible pricing and return policies the paper shows that several such policies currently in effect are suboptimal these include those where the manufacturer offers retailers full credit for all unsold goods or where no returns of unsold goods are permitted the paper also demonstrates that a policy whereby a manufacturer offers retailers full credit for a partial return of goods may achieve channel coordination but that the optimal return allowance will be a function of retailer demand therefore such a policy cannot be optimal in a multi retailer environment it is proven however that a pricing and return policy in which a manufacturer offers retailers a partial credit for all unsold goods can achieve channel coordination in a multi retailer environment this article was originally published in marketing science volume 4 issue 2 pages 166 176 in 1985

optimal inventory and hedging decisions with cvar consideration abstract we consider a newsvendor who makes an ordering decision to meet stochastic demand and buys a put option written on the demand to hedge against the risk of low demand to maximize his expected utility which is measured by the conditional value at risk cvar the put option is fairly priced with specifications for the strike price and the strike quantity with the consideration of lost sale penalty cost we derive structural results on the optimal ordering and hedging polices we show that the newsvendor will not order more than that without the option contract when the strike quantity is pre determined and low and he will order more when the strike quantity is a decision variable moreover the optimal strike quantity is less than or equal to the optimal order quantity in the risk neutral setting and interestingly there are cases in which the optimal hedging ratio first increases then keeps constant as the newsvendor becomes less risk averse we also show that the value of the put option increases as the newsvendor becomes more risk averse and demand becomes more uncertain furthermore the effect of risk aversion on the value of the option highly depends on the magnitudes of the system parameters

industrial pollution in economic development the environmental kuznets curve revisited abstract using new international data this paper tests the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis for industrial water pollution we measure the effect of income growth on three determinants of pollution the share of industry in national output the share of polluting sectors in industrial output and end of pipe eop pollution intensities per unit of output in the polluting sectors we find that the industry share of national output follows a kuznets type trajectory but the other two determinants do not when combined our results imply rejection of the ekc hypothesis for industrial water pollution it rises rapidly through middle income status and remains roughly constant thereafter

option pricing with downward sloping demand curves the case of supply chain options this article investigates the role of option contracts in a supply chain when the demand curve is downward sloping we consider call put options that provide the retailer with the right to reorder return goods at a fixed price we show that the introduction of option contracts causes the wholesale price to increase and the volatility of the retail price to decrease in general options are not zero sum games conditions are derived under which the manufacturer prefers to use options when this happens the retailer is also better off if the uncertainty in the demand curve is low however if the uncertainty is sufficiently high then the introduction of option contracts alters the equilibrium prices in a way that hurts the retailer

vintage capital and the dynamics of the ak model this paper analyzes the equilibrium dynamics of an ak type endogenous growth model with vintage capital the inclusion of vintage capital leads to oscillatory dynamics governed by replacement echoes which additionally influence the intercept of the balanced growth path these features which are in sharp contrast to those from the standard ak model can contribute to explaining the short run deviations observed between investment and growth rates time series to characterize the optimal solutions of the model we develop analytical and numerical methods that should be of interest for the general resolution of endogenous growth models with vintage capital

is the internet a us invention an economic and technological history of computer networking abstract although the inventions embodied in the internet originated in a diverse set of industrial economies the us was consistently the source of critical innovations and an early adopter of new applications why did other nations including several that made important inventive contributions to the internet not play a larger role in its development particularly in the creation of new business organizations governance institutions and applications we argue that the role of the us national innovation system in the creation of the internet echoes several key themes of us technological development before 1940 the presence of a large domestic market a set of antitrust and regulatory policies that weakened the power of incumbent telecommunications firms and a diverse private public research community that was willing to work with both domestic and foreign inventions were important preconditions for us leadership in computer networking innovation

supply contracts profit sharing switching and reaction options a common theme in the studies of flexible supply contracts has been the producer s profit maximization problem without regard to the suppliers reactions however suppliers do react and protect their downside against producer s operating policies by revising their strategies in a manner consistent with their profitmaximization objectives this fact motivates our work using a real options contingent claims approach we analyze and value supply contracts in a setting characterized by exchange rate uncertainty supplier switching options order quantity flexibility profit sharing and supplier reaction options we also use basic diversification concepts from portfolio theory to analyze risk reduction in a unique framework given this setup we explicitly model how flexibility can be mutually beneficial to both the producer and the suppliers using this model we concurrently solve and examine the dual optimization problem for the suppliers and the producer our approach also endogenizes the extent and degree of profit sharing through the resulting optimal policies we also analyze what induces the producer and the suppliers to accept flexibility in their contracts

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

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

environmental policy and growth when inputs are differentiated in pollution intensity environmental policy affects the distribution of market shares if intermediate goods are differentiated in their pollution intensity when innovations are environment friendly a tax on emissions skews demand towards new goods which are the most productive in this case the tax has to increase along a balanced growth path to keep the market shares of goods of different vintages constant comparing balanced growth paths we find that tightening the policy stance spurs innovation because it increases the market share of recent vintages and promotes environment friendly technological progress as a result the cost of environmental policy in terms of slower growth is weaker

valuing flexibility as a complex option this paper develops an approach for valuing flexible production systems using contingent claims pricing demand curves for our model s underlying assets output products may be downward sloping in contrast with the standard option pricing assumption also our marginal production exercise costs may be increasing in addition we allow for multiple products and a production capacity constraint these elements of the model result in complex exercise decisions for the contingent claims which comprise the production system s value we illustrate our approach by valuing a flexible system that produces two products which have profit margin functions with stochastic parameters

environmental policy and competitiveness the porter hypothesis and the composition of capital abstract the porter hypothesis suggests a win win situation in the sense that environmental policy improves both environment and competitiveness the suggestion received strong criticism from economists driven by the idea that if opportunities exist firms do not have to be triggered by an extra cost in this paper a model is developed which confirms this point but which also draws attention to some general mechanisms that relax the trade off considerably downsizing and modernization of firms subject to environmental policy will increase average productivity and will have positive effects on the marginal decrease of profits and environmental damage

the price effect of option introduction this paper examines the price effect of option introduction from 1974 to 1980 the introduction of individual options causes a permanent price increase in the underlying security beginning approximately three days before introduction the price effect appears to be associated with introduction and not announcement throughout the sample period excess returns volatility declines with option introduction systematic risk is unchanged there is a positive relation between the price increase and a measure of activity in the options market copyright 1989 by american finance association

capacity reservation under spot market price uncertainty abstract capacity reservation contracts and spot markets are two alternative purchasing practices we focus on the cost effective management of the combined use of these two procurement sources due to the variability of the spot market prices and demand uncertainty the flexibility of combined sourcing can be advantageous spot market purchasing is a benefit in case of low spot market prices or insufficient reserved capacity and the capacity reservation contract is an operational risk hedging for high spot market price incidents the structure of the optimal combined purchasing policy is complex in this paper we consider a simple and easy to implement capacity reservation base stock policy and compare it to single sourcing options we examine the joint effect of demand and spot market price uncertainty our analysis shows that in the case of large spot market price variability the combined sourcing is superior over spot market sourcing even in the case of low average spot price the combined sourcing is also superior over long term sourcing even in the case of high average spot price if there is large spot market price variability analytical and simulation results are presented to show the effect of the different price cost and uncertainty parameters on the optimal capacity reservation base stock policy and on the expected percentage gain over single sourcing

timing and eco nomic efficiency of climate friendly investments in supply chains abstract emission trading schemes such as the european union emissions trading system euets attempt to reconcile economic efficiency with ecological efficiency by creating financial incentives for companies to invest in climate friendly innovations using real options methodology we demonstrate that under uncertainty economic and ecological efficiency continue to be mutually exclusive this problem is even worse if a climate friendly project depends on investing in of a whole supply chain we model a sequential bargaining game in a supply chain where the parties negotiate over implementation of a carbon dioxide co2 saving investment project we show that the outcome of their bargaining is not economically efficient and even less ecologically efficient furthermore we show that a supply chain becomes less economically efficient and less ecologically efficient with every additional chain link finally we make recommendations for how managers or politicians can improve the situation and thereby increase economic as well as ecological efficiency and thus also the eco efficiency of supply chains

getting closer or drifting apart advances in communication and transportation technologies have the potential to bring people closer together and create a global village however they also allow heterogenous agents to segregate along special interests which gives rise to communities fragmented by type rather than geography we show that lower communication costs should always decrease separation between individual agents even as group based separation increases each measure of separation is pertinent for distinct types of social interaction a group based measure captures the diversity of group preferences that can have an impact on the provision of public goods an individual measure correlates with the speed of information transmission through the social network that afiects for example learning about job opportunities and new technologies we test the model by looking at coauthoring between academic economists before and during the rise of the internet in the 1990s

endogenous default risk in supply chain and non linear pricing abstract based on incomplete contract theories we studied the strategic behaviors of up stream and down stream manufacturers by option game model and obtain some conclusions first the down stream s pay off function is a concave function of its investment in fixed assets so there is an optimal investment which ensures the down stream s maximal pay off and prevents it from being holdup second in presence of endogenous default risks the up stream can improve its pay off level through non linear pricing last increasing business risks of the down stream may lead to an increased price fluctuation of the up stream while the down stream s technological advancement can make such fluctuation less

a general equilibrium analysis of option and stock market interactions the traditional pricing methodology in finance values derivative securities as redundant assets that have no impact on equilibrium prices and allocations this paper demonstrates that when the market is incomplete primary and derivative asset markets generically interact the valuation of derivative and primary security prices depend on the contractual characteristics of the derivative assets available in a version of the mossin mean variance model the authors analyze an equilibrium in which a call option derivative asset is traded and the equilibrium stock price primary asset increases when the options market is opened copyright 1991 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

an analysis of the implications for stock and futures price volatility of program trading and dynamic hedging strategies the notion that a real security is redundant when it can be synthesized by a dynamic trading strategy ignores the informati onal role of real securities markets portfolio insurance uses a dyna mic strategy to synthesize a european put the absence of trading in an appropriate real put option prevents the transmittal of informatio n to market participants about the future price volatility associated with current dynamic hedging strategies less information is transmi tted to potential liquidity providers it will therefore be more di fficult for the market to absorb the trades implied by the dynamic he dging strategies and the stocks future price volatility will rise copyright 1988 by the university of chicago

are there limits to growth a simple theoretical model of pollution is developed that generates an inverted u shape relationship between per capita income and environmental quality this model is then used to study long run growth the same inverted u shape is shown to appear in time series and the prospects for sustained growth are shown to hinge on whether increasingly strict environmental regulation is compatible with a constant rate of return on capital implementation is also studied tax and voucher schemes are shown to have an advantage over direct regulation because they provide the correct incentives for capital accumulation copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

vintage capital investment and growth abstract we study the dynamics of growth and investment in a continuous time model with vintage capital vintage capital models may be characterized by non exponential rates of depreciation and technical change and can incorporate gestation lags as well as learning by using we investigate the effect of such features on the dynamics of investment and growth and show how they can contribute to explaining the volatile nature of investment time series

optimal exercise of jointly held real options a nash bargaining approach with value diversion this paper provides a two stage decision framework in which two or more parties exercise a jointly held real option we show that a single party s timing decision is always socially efficient if it precedes bargaining on the terms of sharing however if the sharing rule is agreed before the exercise timing decision is made then socially optimal timing is attained only if there is a cash payment element in the division of surplus if the party that chooses the exercise timing can divert value from the project then the first best outcome may not be possible at all and the second best outcome may be implemented using a contract that is generally not optimal in the former cases our framework contributes to the understanding of a range of empirical regularities in corporate and entrepreneurial finance

sourcing decisions with capacity reservation contracts abstract by committing to long term supply contracts buyers seek to lower their purchasing costs and have products delivered without interruption when a long term contract is available suppliers are less pressured to find new customers and can afford to charge a price lower than the prevailing spot market price we examine sourcing decisions of a firm in the presence of a capacity reservation contract that this firm makes with its long term supplier in addition to the spot market alternative this contract entails delivery of any desired portion of a reserved fixed capacity in exchange for a guaranteed payment by the buyer we investigate rational actions of the two parties under two different types of periodic review inventory control policies used by the buyer the two number policy and the base stock policy when typical demand probability distributions are considered inclusion of the spot market source in the buyer s procurement plan significantly reduces the capacity commitments from the long term supplier

dual sourcing using capacity reservation and spot market optimal procurement policy and heuristic parameter determination abstract this contribution focuses on the cost effective management of the combined use of two procurement options the short term option is given by a spot market with random price whereas the long term alternative is characterized by a multi period capacity reservation contract with fixed purchase price and reservation level a reservation cost proportional with the reservation level has to be paid for the option of receiving any amount per period up to the reservation level a long term decision has to be made regarding the reserved capacity level and then it has to be decided period by period which quantities to procure from the two sources considering the multi period problem with stochastic demand and spot price the structure of the optimal combined purchasing policy is derived using stochastic dynamic programming exploiting these structural properties an advanced heuristic is developed to determine the respective policy parameters this heuristic is compared with two rolling horizon approaches which use the one period and two period optimal solution a comprehensive numerical study reveals that the approaches based on one period and two period solutions have considerable drawbacks while the advanced heuristic performs very well compared to the optimal solution finally by exploiting our numerical results we give some insights into the system s behavior under problem parameter variations

contracting in supply chains a laboratory investigation the coordination of supply chains by means of contracting mechanisms has been extensively explored theoretically but not tested empirically we investigate the performance of three commonly studied supply chain contracting mechanisms the wholesale price contract the buyback contract and the revenue sharing contract the simplified setting we consider utilizes a two echelon supply chain in which the retailer faces the newsvendor problem the supplier has no capacity constraints and delivery occurs instantaneously we compare the three mechanisms in a laboratory setting using a novel design that fully controls for strategic interactions between the retailer and the supplier results indicate that although the buyback and revenue sharing contracts improve supply chain efficiency relative to the wholesale price contract the improvement is smaller than the theory predicts we also find that although the buyback and revenue sharing contracts are mathematically equivalent they do not generally result in equivalent supply chain performance

induced innovation and energy prices this paper uses u s patent data from 1970 to 1994 to study the impact of energy prices on energy efficient innovations theories of technological change have focused both on demand side factors which spur innovative activity by increasing the value of new innovations and supply side factors such as scientific advancements that make new innovations possible data on demand side factors are easily obtained but data on supply side factors that influence innovation are not readily available this paper uses patent citations as a measure of the usefulness of the existing base of scientific knowledge citations to previous patents are used to construct productivity estimates which measure the usefulness of the existing stock of knowledge to inventors in a given energy field for any given year these estimates are then combined with data on demand side factors to estimate a model of induced innovation in energy technologies the results indicate that both energy prices and the supply of knowledge have strongly significant positive effects on innovation the paper concludes with a discussion of the implication of this work for environmental policy

the role of search in university productivity inside outside and interdisciplinary dimensions due to improving information technology the growing complexity of research problems and policies designed to foster interdisciplinary research the practice of science in the united states has recently undergone significant structural change using a sample of 110 top us universities observed during the late 20th century we find that knowledge flows both in total and in their major components are a significant and positive determinant of research output outside knowledge flows from other universities have increased at a faster rate than inside flows from the same university over time the importance of outside flows for research output has risen and it has done so at a faster rate than the importance of inside flows has decreased thus the overall contribution of knowledge flows has increased and has shifted towards outside flows turning to knowledge flows by field we find that interdisciplinary knowledge flows have increased only slightly relative to same field flows despite policy initiatives that favor interdisciplinary research moreover the importance of interdisciplinary flows for research output while positive and statistically highly significant has stayed about the same even as same field flows have become more important probably because of growth in cyber infrastructure although a final verdict is yet to be reached one interpretation is that interdisciplinary research is still in its early stages while interdisciplinary flows have begun to increase the resulting discoveries and their influence on subsequent research may still lie in the future copyright 2011 the author 2011 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

a comparison of different quantity discount pricing policies in a two echelon channel with stochastic and asymmetric demand information abstract in this paper we study quantity discount pricing policies in a channel of one manufacturer and one retailer the paper assumes that the channel faces a stochastic price sensitive demand but the retailer can privately observe the realization of an uncertain demand parameter the problem is analyzed as a stackelberg game in which the manufacturer declares quantity discount pricing schemes to the retailer and then the retailer follows by selecting the retail price and associated quantity proposed in the paper are four quantity discount pricing policies regular quantity discount fixed percentage discount incremental volume discount and fixed marginal profit rate discount optimal solutions are derived and numerical examples are presented to illustrate the efficiency of each discount policy

the impact of customer returns and bidirectional option contract on refund price and order decisions abstract this study investigates the impacts of customer returns and a bidirectional option contract on a newsvendor firm s refund price and order decisions the stochastic demand is refund price sensitive we show that the optimal refund price increases with the option price and decreases with both the wholesale and exercise prices while the optimal order quantity increases with the exercise price but decreases with both the wholesale and option prices furthermore we illustrate that in the presence of customer returns the optimal refund price and order quantity decrease the firm should cut the refund price and order more products if a bidirectional option contract is available we identify the conditions under which a firm should offer a full partial or no refund policy we also show that a bidirectional option contract can reduce the negative impact of customer returns and enhance the firm s profit especially under high demand uncertainty

buyback contracts with price dependent demands effects of demand uncertainty chapter 2 examines buyback contracts in a supplier retailer supply chain where the retailer faces a price dependent downward sloping demand curve subject to uncertainty compared with classical research a fundamental difference of this research lies in its analytical examination of the effects of demand uncertainty on the applicability of buyback contracts to this end the research seeks to characterize the buyback contract model in terms of only demand uncertainty level with such a new research perspective some new and interesting findings are obtained for such issues as how demand uncertainty level affects the applicability of buyback practice and how to apply this practice to improve supply chain members own interests or the supply chain system s efficiency the research in this chapter demonstrates that the uncertainty level inherent in market demand can be a critical factor influencing the applicability of supply chain contracts as well as the contract s administrative cost cachon 2003 and the uncertainty type marvel and peck 1995

contingent claims contracting for purchasing decisions in inventory management option pricing is a common and important practice in the financial community and has become a fundamental theoretical construct in financial economics the theory is quite rich and has potential uses in many other problem domains this paper develops a variant of the theory as applied to inventory planning in particular we consider a risk management approach that uses negotiated option contracts for hedging against price and quantity uncertainty in inventory procurement we derive conditions for the inclusion of options in inventory control as a function both of managerial attitudes toward risk and of the correlation between price and demand

investments in flexible production capacity abstract we examine the technology and capacity choice problem of a multi output firm facing stochastic demands in a continuous time framework the firm can install output specific capital or at greater cost flexible capital that can be used to produce different outputs investment is irreversible the firm must choose a technology and decide how much capital to install knowing it can add more later as demand evolves we formulate the capacity choice problem as a singular stochastic control problem show that the value of the firm equals the value of its installed capital plus the value of its options to add capacity in the future and derive an optimal investment rule that maximizes the firm s market value we also address the analogous problem for a multi input firm that faces stochastically evolving factor costs and can install input specific or flexible capital

option and forward contracting with asymmetric information valuation issues in supply chains we investigate the role of forward commitments and option contracts between a seller supplier and a buyer retailer in the presence of asymmetric information in our case both parties face price and demand uncertainty but the retailer being closer to the market has additional information about the true demand and price the supplier aware of this asymmetry and acting as a stackelberg leader designs a contracting arrangement that best meet his interest we contrast the role of forward and option contracts in this environment and identify cases where combinations of the two are dominant finally we investigate how alternative contracting arrangements alter the expected value of obtaining information that eliminates asymmetric information

the role of knowledge in r d efficiency past research has recognized that both demand and capability influence the allocation of r d resources scholars have had an easier time getting a grip on demand than on capability while it has been recognized that knowledge is an important part of capability to date formalization of knowledge and its role in r d activity has been unsatisfactory this paper models the role of knowledge in r d various sources of such knowledge are considered the model throws a different light on analyses that employ a knowledge capital stock and also illuminates the dual private and public nature of technological knowledge

environmental policy the porter hypothesis and the composition of capital effects of learning and technological progress abstract in this paper the effect of environmental policy on the composition of capital is investigated by allowing for nonlinearities it generalizes xepapadeas and de zeeuw j environ econ manage 37 1999 165 and determines scenarios in which their results do not carry over in particular we show that the way acquisition cost of investment decreases with the age of the capital stock is of crucial importance we also focus more explicitly on learning and technological progress among others we obtain that in the presence of learning implementing a stricter environmental policy with the aim to reach a certain target of emissions reduction has a stronger negative effect on industry profits which implies quite the opposite as to what is described by the porter hypothesis

the division of labor coordination costs and knowledge this paper considers specialization and the division of labor a more extensive division of labor raises productivity because returns to the time spent on tasks are usually greater to workers who concentrate on a narrower range of skills the traditional discussion of the division of labor emphasizes the limitations to specialization imposed by the extent of the market we claim that the degree of specialization is more often determined by other considerations especially emphasized are various costs of coordinating specialized workers who perform complementary tasks and the amount of general knowledge available