optimal capacity investment decisions with two sided fixed capacity adjustment costs in this paper we consider the optimal management of capacity when a firm faces fixed costs and variable costs to purchase capacity the firm can also salvage capacity and receive a variable value per unit capacity salvaged but faces a different fixed cost in this case each period the firm faces a stochastic demand and maintenance costs for capacity that it decides to keep the firm would thus like to decide how much capacity it should purchase or salvage each period we introduce a new concept which we call k1 k2 concavity and show that the profit to go function satisfies this property this enables us to characterize the structure of an optimal policy which is rather complex consisting of multiple regions in which different decisions are made we show how special cases of this problem e g no fixed costs expansion or contraction not allowed reduce to well known results and how k1 k2 concavity is a generalization of concavity k concavity and sym k concavity we also show how different lead times for purchasing or salvaging capacity can be integrated into the model finally we extend the model to the case where demand is markov modulated and a portion of capacity can deteriorate in each period

an inventory model embedded in designing a supply contract to reduce lead time and its variability modern supply and transportation contracts often specify the frequency of and volume available for future deliveries in advance even when final demand is somewhat uncertain yano and gerchak yano c a y gerchak 1989 transportation contracts and safety stocks for just in time deliveries manufacturing and oper management 2 314 330 we explore the joint optimization of contract parameters and inventory control policy in such environments we first model and derive the optimal periodic review inventory policy corresponding to a given supply contract which generates piecewise linear convex ordering costs the optimal policy has two critical levels and there is a range of stock levels for which the quantity ordered equals the contract volume to numerically compute the critical levels we model consecutive inventory levels as a markov chain whose steady state distribution is used to compute the holding shortage and transportation costs we then use the

ordering policies for periodic review inventory systems with quantity dependent fixed costs we consider a stochastic periodic review inventory control system in which the fixed cost depends on the order quantity in particular we investigate the optimal ordering policies under three fixed cost structures the first structure is motivated by transportation and production contracts and considers two fixed costs if the order size is within a specified limit c then the fixed cost is k1 otherwise it is k2 where k1 k2 the second structure contains multiple fixed costs in which the same incremental fixed cost k is incurred for any additional order quantity up to a given identical batch capacity c in the third structure in addition to the k incurred as in the previous case a common fixed cost is charged for any nonzero order size an example of the former case arises when an order is shipped with a homogeneous fleet of trucks with per truck fixed costs a situation in which a fixed administrative cost plus a quantity dependent trucking cost is incurred for each shipment exemplifies the latter case for the first cost structure we separate the analysis according to the conditions 1 k1 k2 2k1 and 2 k1 k2 under condition 1 we introduce a new concept called c k1 k2 convexity which enables us to almost completely characterize the optimal ordering policy under the general condition 2 we utilize a modified notion to provide a partial characterization of the optimal policy and propose a heuristic policy that performs well under a wide variety of model parameters for the second cost structure we show that it is optimal to order an integer multiple of the batch capacity to raise the inventory level to a specified range or band of length c and then to order an additional full or partial batch size depending on the cost function with no ordering required above the band we also characterize a similar optimal policy for the third cost structure using different techniques our study extends or redevelops several existing results in the literature

optimal selling strategies when to haggle when to hold firm a seller encountering risk neutral buyers one at a time should if commitments are feasible quote a single take it or leave it price to each this strategy is superior to any other for finite or infinite buyer populations whether there is learning or the distribution of buyer prices is known at the outset with one object for sale or many although haggling may offer advantages in terms of price discrimination these gains are more than offset by the losses it generates by encouraging buyers to refuse purchases at high prices

price competition for an informed buyer abstract this paper investigates price competition with private information on the demand side two sellers each offer a different variety of a good to a buyer endowed with a private binary signal on their relative quality the model provides an informational foundation to differentiation in hotelling s price competition game equilibrium comparative statics is performed with respect to the prior belief and the precision of the private information competition is fierce when the prior strongly favors one seller and private signals are relatively uninformative sellers equilibrium profits may fall with the revelation of public information and are nonmonotonic in the prior belief journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 d43 d82 l15

optimal multi unit mechanisms with private demands abstract a seller can produce multiple units of a single good the buyer has constant marginal value for each unit she receives up to a demand and zero marginal value for units beyond the demand the marginal value and the demand are drawn from a distribution and are privately known to the buyer we show that under natural regularity conditions on the distribution the optimal revenue maximizing selling mechanism is deterministic it is a price schedule that specifies the payment based on the number of units purchased further under the same conditions the revenue as a function of the price schedule is concave which in turn implies that the optimal price schedule can be found in polynomial time we give a more detailed characterization of the optimal prices when there are only two possible demands

fifty years of methodological trends in jibs why future ib research needs more triangulation we analyze methodological trends in empirical research in jibs from 1970 2019 our results point to the prevalence of the following patterns there has been an increase in the use of 1 large scale longitudinal cross national datasets 2 complex analytical techniques including the incorporation of multiple analytical techniques within the same study but 3 a decline in the diversity of methods in use we relate these trends to the underlying social technical and communicative conventions in the journal during the 50 year period the observed patterns are consistent with theory that posits scientific fields entrench a dominant paradigm over time resulting in a restricted set of methodological options being selected such restrictions jeopardize the quality of research because the study of any phenomenon requires the use of multiple methodological procedures to avoid the systematic biases errors omissions and limitations introduced by any single option therefore we propose the use of triangulation as a strategy for building methodological alternatives into research designs institutionalization of this principle in the field of international business has the potential to enhance both the rigor and scope of inquiry of future research

optimal inventory policy with two suppliers we analyze a periodic review inventory model where the decision maker can buy from either of two suppliers with the first supplier the buyer incurs a high variable cost but negligible fixed cost with the second supplier the buyer incurs a lower variable cost but a substantial fixed cost consequently ordering costs are piecewise linear and concave we show that a reduced form of generalized s s policy is optimal for both finite and discounted infinite horizon problems provided that the demand density is log concave this condition on the distribution is much less restrictive than in previous models in particular it applies to the normal truncated normal gamma and beta distributions which were previously excluded we concentrate on the situation in which sales are lost but explain how the policy cost assumptions and proofs can be altered for the case where excess demand is backordered in the lost sales case the optimal policy will have one of three possible forms a base stock policy for purchasing exclusively at the high variable cost hvc supplier an slvc slvc policy for buying exclusively from the low variable cost lvc supplier or a hybrid s shvc slvc policy for buying from both suppliers

sorting versus screening search frictions and competing mechanisms in a market where sellers compete by posting trading mechanisms we allow for a general search technology and show that its features crucially affect the equilibrium mechanism price posting prevails when meetings are rival i e when a meeting by one buyer reduces another buyer s meeting probability under price posting buyers reveal their type by sorting ex ante only if the meeting technology is sufficiently non rival price posting is not an equilibrium multiple buyer types then visit the same sellers who screen ex post through auctions

analysis of batch ordering inventory models with setup cost and capacity constraint abstract stochastic periodic review batch ordering inventory problems appear in many industrial settings however few literature deals with the optimal ordering polices for such problems no mention to the inclusion of the fixed ordering cost and the production capacity in this paper we consider a single item periodic review batch ordering inventory system with the consideration of the setup cost and the capacity constraint for each order over a finite planning horizon by proposing several new convex notions we show that a batch based s s policy is optimal for the unlimited ordering capacity case while for the limited ordering capacity case a modified r q policy is optimal for the setting with zero ordering setup cost and a batch based x y band policy for the setting with positive ordering setup cost moreover we analytically study the sensitivity of the policy parameters with respect to the capacity and batch order size and derive the bounds on the optimal policy parameters we further extend our analysis to the infinite horizon setting and show that the structure of the optimal policy remains similar finally the numerical experiments provide some insights into the impact of model parameters on the benefit of reducing the batch size and increasing the ordering capacity and indicate that ignoring batch requirement may lead to a significant cost increment

ranking the international business journals this study seeks to assess and rank the relative quality of 30 international business journals using both a citation analysis and a survey approach journal rankings are presented using both approaches in addition to a composite ranking the rankings provide an objective analysis of journal quality for tenure and promotion committees for ib researchers considering journal submission options and provide the academic community with a better understanding of which international business publication outlets are the most influential in guiding research in this discipline

coordinating inventory control and pricing strategies with random demand and fixed ordering cost the finite horizon case we analyze a finite horizon single product periodic review model in which pricing and production inventory decisions are made simultaneously demands in different periods are random variables that are independent of each other and their distributions depend on the product price pricing and ordering decisions are made at the beginning of each period and all shortages are backlogged ordering cost includes both a fixed cost and a variable cost proportional to the amount ordered the objective is to find an inventory policy and a pricing strategy maximizing expected profit over the finite horizon we show that when the demand model is additive the profit to go functions arek concave and hence an s s p policy is optimal in such a policy the period inventory is managed based on the classical s s policy and price is determined based on the inventory position at the beginning of each period for more general demand functions i e multiplicative plus additive functions we demonstrate that the profit to go function is not necessarilyk concave and an s s p policy is not necessarily optimal we introduce a new concept the symmetrick concave functions and apply it to provide a characterization of the optimal policy

the stature of the journal of international business studies this article examines the standing of the journal of international business studies jibs among scholarly journals and changes in its influence over a 11 year period 1981 to 1991 using a variety of citation indices we suggested that two new measures a prestige index and a trajectory index are helpful in assessing a journal s influence and reputation we estimate these as well as several standard citation measures to gauge jibs progress in the recent past we find that jibs does well on all measures but room for improvement remains this article discusses options available to the editorial board to raise jibs prestige

an analysis of twenty five years of research in the journal of international business studies the article analyzes the twenty five years of research published in the journal of international business studies jibs since its inception in 1970 the article reviews the authors their institutional affiliations and the discipline content of the published articles

membership of editorial boards and rankings of schools with international business orientation using 4 year data 1990 1994 1998 and 2002 we have provided a ranking of schools with international business ib orientation based on the membership of editorial boards of 30 leading international business journals participation on the editorial boards of quality journals is highly selective and should provide a quality indication of the schools both quality unadjusted and adjusted board membership based ranking are calculated in this study several interesting findings are worth noting first us schools play a significant leadership role among the leading ib programs second the findings of this study also show the major contribution of non us schools which confirms the importance of the global nature of the ib discipline third the top ranked schools share a number of characteristics finally the correlation among different ranking criteria can be low particularly for the top ranked schools suggesting that care should be exercised in interpreting school ranking

the power of international business research statistical power is the probability of accepting the null hypothesis when it is false type ii error this research note reports the results of a statistical power analysis of international business research published in the journal of international business studies management international review the academy of management journal and the strategic management journal from 1990 to 1999 the results show that although average statistical power is high compared with other disciplines it is sufficient only for large effect sizes ess only studies published in the journal of international business studies and the academy of management journal achieve average statistical power levels that are sufficient for both medium and large ess still the observed likelihood of committing type ii errors in international business research is very high for small ess 92 and high for medium ess 45 in addition statistical power is not explicitly mentioned or used by international business researchers a weakness that this note is designed to change

optimal policy for a periodic review inventory system under a supply capacity contract transportation and production contracts often specify the frequency and volume reserved by the supplier for a particular customer s deliveries this practice motivated henig et al henig m y gerchak r ernst d pyke 1997 an inventory model embedded in designing a supply contract management sci 43 184 189 to study a periodic review inventory control model where ordering cost is zero if the order quantity does not exceed a given contract volume and is linear in the excess quantity otherwise this paper addresses the same problem but with a fixed cost if the order quantity is above the contract volume the fixed cost may represent the cost of disruption for the supplier finding more trucks arranging extra processing capacity persuading other customers to wait etc as well as additional administrative costs also suppliers may impose such costs simply to induce desired behavior by buyers this order cost function is neither convex nor concave the classical inventory models with fixed costs are special cases with contract volume zero we partially characterize the optimal policy for this system and develop a simple effective heuristic policy we also apply the model to a production control problem in which an incentive is provided for not ordering over a certain quota

public good provision with many participants for a nonexcludable public good with benefit and cost functions independent of the number of participants this paper studies second best allocations under bayesian interim incentive compatibility and interim individual rationality as the number of participants becomes large second best provision levels converge in distribution to first best levels if the latter are bounded second best provision levels become large in absolute terms but small relative to first best levels if benefit and cost functions are isoelastic in contrast for an excludable public good the ratio of second best to first best levels is bounded away from zero

capacitated inventory problems with fixed order costs some optimal policy structure abstract almost 40 years ago h scarf the optimality of s s policies in dynamic inventory problems in k arrow s karlin p suppes eds mathematical models in the social sciences stanford university press stanford 1960 established the optimal s s policy structure for the periodic review inventory problem with fixed ordering costs and no capacity constraint since then the capacitated problem has resisted characterization in the present paper we partially bridge this gap using a generalization of scarf s k convexity we show that the optimal capacitated policy has an s s like structure to do so we divide the parameter space into four regions in two of these regions the optimal policy is completely specified while in the other two it is partially specified we complement these findings with a computational study this study suggests that a still simpler optimal policy structure exists