金融创新对货币需求影响的模型分析

本文将金融创新作为投资项目,假设了一个包含金融创新过程的初始成本。并将其导入Lucas现金预付款模型,然后利用这一拓展型模型分析了技术创新、利率变化、经济增长以及金融创新等因素对货币需求变化的影响。     

区分仓库与货架库存需求影响效应的零售商库存决策

既往有关库存水平影响需求条件下的库存问题研究中,通常对终端库存水平是否存在货架与零售商仓库库存水平的区别未作深入探讨。本文的研究认为,现实中许多零售商拥有仓库,其现有库存水平包括仓库库存和货架库存两部分,而影响需求的仅为与货架展示能力相关的库存,因此有必要对二者的需求影响效应进行区分。在明确这一区别的前提下,本文首先建立了供应商管理库存情况下库存水平影响需求问题的一般库存模型,给出零售商的最优订货策略;并考虑货架的容量限制,给出零售商启用仓库的判断条件。由于仓库库存仅在能够影响货架展示能力的条件下才能够影响消费需求,本文还进一步讨论了在零售商拥有仓库时,区分货架与仓库的库存水平影响需求条件下的最优库存与订货决策。这对于经营不同特征商品的零售商在进行是否需要拥有仓库,以及拥有仓库条件下的库存决策具有很好的参考价值。     

Managing Inventory with Cash Register Information: Sales Recorded but Not Demands

Inventory inaccuracy is common in many businesses. While retailers employ cash registers to enter incoming orders and outgoing sales, inaccuracy arises because they do not record invisible demand such as spoilage, damage, pilferage, or returns. This setting results in incomplete inventory and demand information. An important inventory control problem therefore is to maximize the total expected discounted profit under this setting. Allowing for dependence between demand and invisible demand, we obtain the associated dynamic programming equation with an infinite‐dimensional state space, and reduce it to a simpler form by employing the concept of unnormalized probability. We develop an analytical upper bound on the optimal profit as well as an iterative algorithm for an approximate solution of the problem. We compare profits of the iterative solution and the myopic solution, and then to the upper bound. We see that the iterative solution performs better than the myopic solution, and significantly so in many cases. Furthermore, it gives a profit not far from the upper bound, and is therefore close to optimal. Using our results, we also discuss meeting inventory service levels.     

需求替代情形下反应能力的价值分析

本文通过对竞争报童模型加以拓展以研究需求替代情形下企业运用反应能力产生的价值。文中考虑了两种不同的需求结构:第一种中企业总需求是竞争双方库存量的分段线性函数,第二种中企业总需求的均值是双方库存水平任意形式的函数。根据需求结构的不同,建立了不同的库存竞争模型并提出了相应的均衡库存策略。基于这些均衡结论,进一步探讨了反应能力的价值。分析表明运用反应能力能在降低企业库存水平的同时提高顾客服务水平。此外,在不同的需求结构下,运用反应能力产生的价值均随可用反应能力以及缺货惩罚成本递增,而随单位反应能力的使用成本递减。     

Shelf Space Management When Demand Depends on the Inventory Level

Two factors that their influence on the demand has been investigated in many papers are (i) the shelf space allocated to a product and to its complement or supplement products and (ii) the instantaneous inventory level seen by customers. Here we analyze the joint shelf space allocation and inventory decisions for multiple items with demand that depends on both factors. The traditional approach to solve inventory models with a state‐dependent demand rate uses a time domain approach. However, this approach often does not lead to closed‐form expressions for the profit rate with both dependencies. We analyze the problem in the inventory domain via level crossing theory. This approach leads to closed‐form expressions for a large set of demand rate functions exhibiting both dependencies. These closed‐form expressions substantially simplify the search for optimal solutions; thus we use them to solve the joint inventory control and shelf space allocation problem. We consider examples with two products to investigate the significance of capturing both demand dependencies. We show that in some settings it is important to capture both dependencies. We consider two heuristics, each one of them ignores one of the two dependencies. Using these heuristics it seems that ignoring the dependency on the shelf space might be less harmful than ignoring the dependency on the inventory level, which, based on computational results, can lead to profit losses of more than 6%. We demonstrate that retailers should use their operational control, e.g., reorder point, to promote higher demand products.     

Sizing Inventory When Lead Time and Demand are Correlated

Determining appropriate inventory levels has been a subject of interest for both researchers and practitioners. Standard practice is to treat lead time demand as a random sum of random numbers and rely on established probability theory to calculate both reorder point and safety stock levels. A key assumption in these calculations, however, is that lead time and demand are not correlated. In this paper, we first explore situations where this assumption is untrue and then develop equations to determine the reorder point and the safety stock when lead time and demand are correlated. More specifically, we (1) derive formulas for the average and variance of the demand in a lead time, which can then be used to calculate the reorder point and the safety stock, (2) apply these formulas to two distributions for which there is a closed‐form solution: normal and Poisson, and (3) examine the effect of correlation on safety stock requirements under the normal distribution.     

不确定需求环境下多级库存系统优化与协调模型研究

论文首先将模糊随机变量扩展为混合随机变量,并用来描述不确定需求.然后对多级单周期库存系统在模糊随机和混合随机需求环境下的优化与协调问题作了研究,提出了通过集成库存管理使库存系统整体收益期望值最大化的优化模型和协调合作伙伴利益的数量折扣契约模型,并根据遗传算法理论和计算机模拟技术设计了求解模型的智能算法.最后通过实例对模型进行了仿真分析.     

基于融资风险的现金持有与企业技术创新投入的关系研究

信息不对称条件下,现金能否作为保障技术创新投入的资金来源颇受理论界和实务界的关注。本文以2007-2013年沪深两市的非金融上市公司为样本,利用OLS和固定效应模型,对上市公司现金持有、超额现金持有与技术创新投入关系进行多元回归分析,研究结果表明上市公司的技术创新投入和现金持有以及超额现金持有呈正比,说明我国上市公司会提高自身的现金持有以应对技术创新的需要。进一步区分公司所面临的融资风险后,发现我国的民营上市公司、融资约束上市公司以及债务期限结构较短的公司技术创新投入和现金持有、超额现金持有之间的正相关关系更加显著。     

一种需求和采购价均为时变的EOQ模型

本文提出了一种需求和采购价均为时变的EOQ模型,证明了该模型的总库存成本目标函数在给定条件下为凸函数,给出了寻求最佳采购次数及服务水平的算法,并对该模型进行了数值仿真和灵敏度分析。     

Joint Inventory and Pricing Coordination with Incomplete Demand Information

In retailing operations, retailers face the challenge of incomplete demand information. We develop a new concept named K‐approximate convexity, which is shown to be a generalization of K‐convexity, to address this challenge. This idea is applied to obtain a base‐stock list‐price policy for the joint inventory and pricing control problem with incomplete demand information and even non‐concave revenue function. A worst‐case performance bound of the policy is established. In a numerical study where demand is driven from real sales data, we find that the average gap between the profits of our proposed policy and the optimal policy is 0.27%, and the maximum gap is 4.6%.     

Inventory Management for Customers with Alternative Lead Times

It is common for suppliers operating in batch‐production mode to deal with patient and impatient customers. This paper considers inventory models in which a supplier provides alternative lead times to its customers: a short or a long lead time. Orders from patient customers can be taken by the supplier and included in the next production cycle, while orders from impatient customers have to be satisfied from the on‐hand inventory. We denote the action to commit one unit of on‐hand inventory to patient or impatient customers as the inventory‐commitment decision, and the initial inventory stocking as the inventory‐replenishment decision. We first characterize the optimal inventory‐commitment policy as a threshold type, and then prove that the optimal inventory‐replenishment policy is a base‐stock type. Then, we extend our analysis to models to consider cases of a multi‐cycle setting, a supply‐capacity constraint, and the on‐line charged inventory‐holding cost. We also evaluate and compare the performances of the optimal inventory‐commitment policy and the inventory‐rationing policy. Finally, to further investigate the benefits and pitfalls of introducing an alternative lead‐time choice, we use the customer‐choice model to study the demand gains and losses, known as demand‐induction and demand‐cannibalization effects, respectively.     

Replenishment Policies for Multi‐Product Stochastic Inventory Systems with Correlated Demand and Joint‐Replenishment Costs

This study analyzes optimal replenishment policies that minimize expected discounted cost of multi‐product stochastic inventory systems. The distinguishing feature of the multi‐product inventory system that we analyze is the existence of correlated demand and joint‐replenishment costs across multiple products. Our objective is to understand the structure of the optimal policy and use this structure to construct a heuristic method that can solve problems set in real‐world sizes/dimensions. Using an MDP formulation we first compute the optimal policy. The optimal policy can only be computed for problems with a small number of product types due to the curse of dimensionality. Hence, using the insight gained from the optimal policy, we propose a class of policies that captures the impact of demand correlation on the structure of the optimal policy. We call this class (s, c, d, S)‐policies, and also develop an algorithm to compute good policies in this class, for large multi‐product problems. Finally using an exhaustive set of computational examples we show that policies in this class very closely approximate the optimal policy and can outperform policies analyzed in prior literature which assume independent demand. We have also included examples that illustrate performance under the average cost objective.     

Financial Hedging and Optimal Procurement Policies under Correlated Price and Demand

We consider a firm that procures an input commodity to produce an output commodity to sell to the end retailer. The retailer's demand for the output commodity is negatively correlated with the price of the output commodity. The firm can sell the output commodity to the retailer through a spot, forward or an index‐based contract. Input and output commodity prices are also correlated and follow a joint stochastic price process. The firm maximizes shareholder value by jointly determining optimal procurement and hedging policies. We show that partial hedging dominates both perfect hedging and no‐hedging when input price, output price, and demand are correlated. We characterize the optimal financial hedging and procurement policies as a function of the term structure of the commodity prices, the correlation between the input and output prices, and the firm's operating characteristics. In addition, our analysis illustrates that hedging is most beneficial when output price volatility is high and input price volatility is low. Our model is tested on futures price data for corn and ethanol from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.     

供需不确定条件下基于CVaR的零售商库存鲁棒优化模型

在经典报童模型下考虑供应和需求不确定性,研究了具有风险厌恶的零售商库存优化问题。采用条件风险值(CVaR)对库存绩效进行度量,构建了基于CVaR的零售商库存运作模型;在此基础上,考虑上游供应商供货能力和下游市场需求不确定性,并采用一系列未知概率的离散情景进行描述,给出了供需不确定条件下基于CVaR的零售商库存鲁棒优化模型。进一步,采用区间不确定集对未知情景概率进行建模,给出了基于最大最小准则的鲁棒对应模型。针对同时考虑供需不确定性导致的模型非凸性,采用标准对偶理论将其转化为易于求解的数学规划问题。最后,通过数值计算分析了不同风险厌恶程度和不确定性程度对零售商库存决策以及库存绩效的影响。结果表明,供需不确定性的存在虽然会导致零售商库存绩效损失,但损失值较小。特别地,依据文中模型得到的鲁棒库存策略在多数情况下能够保证零售商获得更优的库存绩效。此外,不确定性和风险厌恶程度的增加虽然会影响零售商库存决策和运作绩效,但在同等风险厌恶态度下,随着不确定性程度的增加,基于文中方法得到的鲁棒库存策略仍能确保零售商获得理想的库存绩效,表明文中所建模型在应对供需不确定性方面具有良好的鲁棒性。     

基于时变需求的供应链基本库存水平优化研究

在时变需求环境下,基于模型推导得到供需双方基本库存水平局部优化与整体优化决策方程,并基于算例对基本库存水平整体优化的成本绩效以及需求时变性的影响进行数据分析,得到如下重要结论:基本库存水平整体优化明显降低供应链库存成本.     

产能和需求不确定情形下ATO系统最优库存和生产决策研究

通过将产成品的最终组装环节延迟到观察到实际需求以后进行,按订单组装(Assemble-to-Order,ATO)策略能够有效避免按库存生产(Make-to-Stock)策略下因为生产过剩而带来的损失和风险。然而,在未来产能有限的情形下,生产商必须提前组装部分产成品,以最大化自身收益。本文考虑一个未来需求和组装产能同时具有不确定性的单周期ATO系统:在观察到实际需求以前,生产商必须准备好所有的零部件库存,并组装适量的产成品;观察到实际需求和实际可用组装能力以后,则根据需要进一步追加产成品产量,以尽可能满足客户需求,从而最大化自身利益。通过构建一个两阶段规划模型,我们研究了生产商的最优零部件库存和最优生产决策;并进一步考察了生产商可以通过紧急外包来获取额外组装产能时的最优决策。研究结果为随机环境下生产商合理采购零部件库存和合理安排生产提供了有益的管理启示。     

The Impact of External Demand Information on Parallel Supply Chains with Interacting Demand

This paper considers two parallel supply chains with interacting demand streams. Each supply chain consists of one supplier and one retailer. The two demand streams are jointly described with a vector autoregressive time‐series process in which they interact and their respective innovation errors correlate contemporaneously. For each supply chain, we develop insights into when and how much the supplier and the retailer can improve on their forecasting accuracy if the external demand history of the other supply chain is utilized. When this external demand history is not available or made available after a time lag, we develop a partial process and a delayed process to characterize the demand structure that the retailer can recover from the available demand histories. Our results show that the external demand history of the other supply chain always helps the retailer make better forecasts when demand streams interact; however, the enhanced information alters the retailer's order process, which may produce larger forecasting errors for the supplier. Conditions are established for the supplier to benefit from the external demand history of the other supply chain.     

Inventory Sharing with Transshipment: Impacts of Demand Distribution Shapes and Setup Costs

We study a firm's optimal transshipment problem considering the impacts of setup costs for transshipment and demand distribution shapes. We assume that the demand follows a three‐point distribution, which changes from a degenerate distribution, to a unimodal distribution, and to a bimodal distribution as the demand shape parameter increases. We find that as the demand shape parameter increases, the optimal transshipment strategy changes from no transshipment to transshipment, and finally to no transshipment. The firm would use two‐way transshipment when the shape parameter is relatively small, while it would use one‐way transshipment when the shape parameter is relatively large. When the optimal strategy is one‐way transshipment, the transshipment direction depends on the contribution margin as well as the demand shape, when the difference between the two demand uncertainties is small. Our study of a dual‐channel retail system shows that the additional benefit of two‐way transshipment is negligible when there are many retail stores.     

A New Two‐Bin Policy for Inventory Systems with Differentiated Demand Classes

We consider an inventory system under continuous review with two demand classes that are different in terms of service level required (or penalty cost incurred for backordering of demand). Prior literature has proposed the critical level rationing (CLR) policy under which the demand from the lower priority class is backordered once inventory falls below the critical level. While this reduces the penalty cost for the higher demand class, the fill rate achieved for the lower priority demand class gets compromised. In this study, we propose a new class of two‐bin (2B) policy for the problem. The proposed 2B policy assigns separate bins of inventory for the two demand classes. The demand for each class is fulfilled from its assigned bin. However, when the bin intended for the higher demand class is empty, the demand from the higher class can still be fulfilled with the inventory from the other bin. The advantage of the 2B policy is that better fill rates are achieved, especially for the lower demand class. Computational results show that the proposed policy is able to provide a much higher service level for the lower priority class demand without increasing the total cost too much and without affecting the service level for the higher priority class. When a service level constrained optimization problem is considered, the 2B policy dominates the CLR policy when the service level difference for the two classes is not too high or the service levels required for both the classes are relatively lower.     

The Retail Planning Problem Under Demand Uncertainty

We consider the retail planning problem in which the retailer chooses suppliers and determines the production, distribution, and inventory planning for products with uncertain demand to minimize total expected costs. This problem is often faced by large retail chains that carry private‐label products. We formulate this problem as a convex‐mixed integer program and show that it is strongly NP‐hard. We determine a lower bound by applying a Lagrangian relaxation and show that this bound outperforms the standard convex programming relaxation while being computationally efficient. We also establish a worst‐case error bound for the Lagrangian relaxation. We then develop heuristics to generate feasible solutions. Our computational results indicate that our convex programming heuristic yields feasible solutions that are close to optimal with an average suboptimality gap at 3.4%. We also develop managerial insights for practitioners who choose suppliers and make production, distribution, and inventory decisions in the supply chain.