Push and Pull Contracts in a Local Supply Chain with an Outside Market*

Wholesale price contracts are widely studied in a single supplier‐single retailer supply chain, but without considering an outside market where the supplier may sell if he gets a high enough price and the retailer may buy if the price is low enough. We fill this gap in the literature by studying push and pull contracts in a local supplier–retailer supply chain with the presence of an outside market. Taking the local supplier's maximum production capacity and the outside market barriers into account, we identify the Pareto set of the push and/or pull contracts and draw managerial implications. The main results include the following. First, the most inefficient point of the pull Pareto set cannot always be removed by considering both the push and pull contracts. Second, the supplier's production capacity plays a significant role in the presence of an outside market; it affects the supplier's negotiating power with the retailer and the coordination of the supply chain can be accomplished only with a large enough capacity. Third, the import and export barriers influence the supply chain significantly: (i) an export barrier in the local market and the supplier's production capacity influence the supplier's export strategy; (ii) a low import (resp., export) barrier in the local market can improve the local supply chain's efficiency by use of a push (resp., pull) contract; and (iii) a high import (resp., export) barrier in the local market encourages the supplier (resp., retailer) to bear more inventory risk.     

实报还是谎报——双边信息激励与供应链效率

探讨了双边不对称信息下供应链信息真实分享和谎报对效率的影响。首先,给出完全信息下的最优商品交易量和供应链利润作为比较基准。其次,构建双方信息真实分享的激励模型。研究发现激励双方信息真实共享所需的信息租金降低交易量和供应链利润。再次,构建允许信息谎报的交易量谈判模型。研究发现,供销双方都偏好高报自己的信息类型。个体谎报信息的幅度随着谈判力增加而减小。拥有绝对谈判力的一方不会谎报信息。供应链效率与谎报信息的幅度、成本上界以及销售价格相关。最后,通过数值算例对实报信息和谎报信息下交易量、供应链个体利润及效率进行对比分析。研究结果为管理实践提供一定的洞见:供应链企业是否激励双边信息分享可根据双方成本大小进行选择。     

天然气基础设施及储备影响下的进出口策略

基于天然气进口国实施天然气基础设施建设,出口国进行天然气储备的框架下,本文构建了两国关于天然气进出口的动态模型,并运用最优控制理论,求得了进口国的天然气销售价格、天然气基础设施投入以及出口国的天然气开采量等最优决策路径。结果表明,进口国的各最优决策路径均呈单调性变化收敛至最优稳态;当初始天然气基础设施存量与初始天然气储量均面临不足(过剩)时,出口国的最优决策路径在收敛至最优稳态的过程中可能不再呈单调性变化;进出口两国各决策的最优稳态水平均随天然气需求基础设施弹性的增加而增加;除最优稳态天然气销售价格随天然气出口价格上升而上升以外,其它决策的最优稳态水平均随其上升而下降;出口国最优稳态效用、进出口两国联合最优稳态效用均与天然气最优稳态出口价格呈倒"U"型关系,且前者达到最大值时的天然气出口价格高于后者。     

Sales Force and Competition in Financial Product Markets: The Case of Mexico's Social Security Privatization

This paper examines how sales force impacts competition and equilibrium prices in the context of a privatized pension market. We use detailed administrative data on fund manager choices and worker characteristics at the inception of Mexico's privatized social security system, where fund managers had to set prices (management fees) at the national level, but could select sales force levels by local geographic areas. We develop and estimate a model of fund manager choice where sales force can increase or decrease customer price sensitivity. We find exposure to sales force lowered price sensitivity, leading to inelastic demand and high equilibrium fees. We simulate oft proposed policy solutions: a supply‐side policy with a competitive government player and a demand‐side policy that increases price elasticity. We find that demand‐side policies are necessary to foster competition in social safety net markets with large segments of inelastic consumers.     

Privatization—A cure for all ills?

Before a troubled State-owned company can be privatized, the management dimension must be examined. The privatization strategy must be closely linked with the overall business strategy to ensure that the opportunities afforded by the operation provide for long-term profit enhancement. The logic behind the state-owned enterprise is described and the objectives of privatization, the pros and cons, are analysed.     

供应链中双边汇率风险传导机理及传导结果

利用批发价合同构建了一个包含国外零售商、国内零售商、制造商与供应商的博弈模型，其中制造商面临着进出口双边汇率风险。通过模型均衡，研究了双边汇率波动性及其相关性结构对供应链节点企业运作变量的波动性、期望业绩和业绩方差的影响（传导机理和结果）。结果表明：当进出口汇率波动负相关时，随着进（出）口汇率波动性程度的增加，（1）供应商和国外零售商运作变量的波动性、期望业绩和业绩方差，制造商对供应商和国外零售商的均衡批发价方差，制造商期望业绩均增加；（2）制造商对国内零售商的均衡批发价方差，国内零售商运作变量的波动性、期望业绩和业绩方差均先降低后增加，风险传导呈现出U-型特征；当进出口汇率波动正相关时，随着进（出）口汇率波动性程度的增加，（3）供应商和国外零售商运作变量的波动性、期望业绩和业绩方差，制造商对供应商和国外零售商的均衡批发价方差，制造商期望业绩均先降低后增加，此时风险传导也呈现出U-型特征；（4）制造商对国内零售商的均衡批发价方差，国内零售商运作变量的波动性、期望业绩和业绩方差均增加。     

Economic reforms, corporate governance and privatization method as determinants in performance changes of new privatized firms: the case of MENA countries

This paper aims to provide the determinants of how privatization works in some selected Middle East North Africa countries. Using a sample of 75 new privatized firms we examine the performance changes in countries namely Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and Turkey. We document a significant increase in profitability, efficiency and output as well as a decrease in leverage. We also identify that these improvements vary with economic reforms and environment, effectiveness of corporate governance and the privatization method used. In particular, financial liberalization and control relinquishment by the government are associated with higher efficiency and output. Furthermore, foreign participation and the use of share issue privatization as divestment method appear to have a positive impact on efficiency and output changes. Additionally, the use of private sales is related to a significant decrease in leverage. Finally our results highlight the importance of economic reforms, corporate governance and the choice of privatization method in explaining the post privatization changes in performance.     

Privatizing Australian Airports: Ownership, Divestment and Financial Performance

This article addresses the performance of the three largest Australian airports following their privatization. The airports represent cases of divestment of government business enterprises into privately-owned businesses each with differing ownership arrangements. The performances of the privatized airports are considered using financial data obtained from general purpose financial reports of the entities. There are significant implications for future divestment policies, including the value of divestment as a policy response in uncompetitive environments, the use of particular infrastructure investment models, and the nature of the linkage between ownership structure and financial performance.     

不同突发事件下进口原油采购策略

石油对经济生活的重要性不言而喻,中国原油的高对外依存度及集中的进口来源区域引起我们对能源安全的广泛关注,如何有效最小化国际原油价格波动和供应短缺或中断带来的风险,制定突发事件影响下的最佳采购策略是我们必需关注的焦点,但目前结合突发事件的采购策略研究还不足。论文通过采用符合中国原油进口习惯的月度数据,建立了突发事件下的CVaR模型,综合考虑价格波动、供应中断造成的GDP冲击和战略石油储备因素,分析三种不同突发事件情景下的原油进口采购策略。研究表明：当预期中东区域出现危机时,非洲和欧洲/俄罗斯是增加采购量的理想选择,若迪拜价格波动不剧烈,亚太采购量也可适当增加;对于仅仅只有价格变动,动用战略石油储备降低风险有限,只有当供给中断时,动用战略储备才能发挥巨大的降低风险,更好的减少对国民经济冲击的作用。本文在最小化原油进口风险值且同时考虑进口来源多样化、风险、成本及价格变动率的情况下,构建的基于CVaR的应急原油进口采购策略模型,丰富了该领域的研究成果,为中国原油进口采购策略提供了具体可操作的参考。     

UK Privatization: Its Impact on Procurement

This study is concerned with changes in procurement and supply chain management in UK privatized companies. In most cases, privatization requires the organization to develop a completely new approach. This is because of the change in ownership and the new competitive environment into which the company moves. Part of this reassessment of the business by senior management can be expected to include procurement. The paper focuses on the nature and direction of the changes in procurement associated with privatization, based on research into the privatized sector in Britain. The method adopted involves an extensive questionnaire completed by 28 major companies privatized in the UK, followed up by interviews with twelve of these companies. Questions centre on the following key areas: changes in the structure of procurement, procurement strategy, the role and profile of procurement within the company, attitudes to outsourcing and supplier performance and changes in approach to assessing the performance of the procurement function. Our results indicate extensive change. Although cost reduction is often a driver of these changes, as the companies strive to reduce costs to meet City expectations and best practice in the private sector, another consideration is the contribution that procurement can make to the overall strategy of the company, so as to gain and maintain competitive advantage.     

Competition within the U.S. National Security Regime: A study of the U.S. Aerospace Defense Sector

This article examines the aerospace defense sector and the national export control regime within which U.S. corporations operate. While the U.S. federal government plays many roles in this industry, the focus here is on its role as regulator of defense exports from the United States. From this vantage point, ten case studies illustrate the difficulties faced by companies in this challenging environment, and highlight factors that lead to noncompliance with U.S. government regulations. Firm performance effects are investigated, including impacts on profits, share price, and reputation. The paper concludes with implications for international management practice and international business research that reflect realities in the aerospace defense sector.     

Joint Ordering and Pricing Strategies for Managing Substitutable Products

Starr and Rubinson (1978) develop a model to establish the relationship between product demand and relative prices. The notion of relative prices motivates us to consider a situation in which a retailer would either charge the same retail price for all products if he adopts a ‘fixed’ pricing strategy or charge different prices for different products if he adopts a ‘variable’ pricing strategy. In this paper, we develop a base model with deterministic demand that is intended to examine how a retailer should jointly determine the order quantity and the retail price of two substitutable products under the fixed and variable pricing strategies. Our analysis indicates that the optimal retail price under the variable pricing strategy is equal to the optimal retail price under the fixed pricing strategy plus or minus an adjustment term. This adjustment term depends on product substitutability and price sensitivity. We also present two different extensions of our base model. In the first extension, our analysis indicates that the underlying structure of the optimal retail price and order quantity is preserved when there is a limit on the total order quantity. The second extension deals with the issue of retail competition. Relative to the base case, we show that the underlying structure of the optimal retail price and order quantity is preserved in a duopolistic environment. Moreover, our analysis suggests that both retailers would adopt the variable pricing strategy at the equilibrium.     

A DECISION THEORETIC APPROACH TO PRICING

The problem of price determination and revision is considered as a case of decision making under uncertainty in which profit is to be maximized. Typically price is a simple function of cost which in turn determines the quantity which will be demanded. This paper proposes that maximum profits could be realized in the long run, if a quantity corresponding to the lowest cost per unit of product under the attendant circumstances was fixed and a price established at which demand would exactly equal the fixed quantity. It further suggests a theoretical approach to the determination of this price based on decision theory. The decision theoretic approach considers the set of possible price levels at which demand will equal the fixed quantity of product as the state of nature. The set of acts consist of the establishment of the product price at each of the possible levels. After an initial price is established, empirical information can then be utilized according to some optimal decision rule for subsequent price revisions.     

Roles of Transparency and Trust in the Relationship between Privatization and Customers’ Satisfaction in Ethiopia: Results of Structural Equation Modelling

As a part of public sector reform, privatization has been actively experienced since three decades across the globe. This study examines the relationship between privatization of public organizations and customers’ satisfaction in Ethiopia with the mediating role of transparency and trust. The structural equation modelling was applied to 315 samples taken from privatized services and manufacturing sectors. The results established that transparency alone fails to be a mediator, but trust plays the role of a partial mediator into the relationship between privatization and customers satisfaction. Combined together, the model results into a partial mediation of both transparency and trust.

     

合同订购与现货市场混合交易下的双渠道供应链优化决策

为了更好地匹配需求与供应, 提高企业收益和服务水平, 本文研究了合同订购与现货市场交易结合下的双渠道供应链优化决策问题。首先分析了单纯批发价合同订购模式下的决策, 进一步考虑现货市场单向交易及双向交易的情形, 将供应链回购合同与数量柔性合同引入单向现货市场, 建立了这两类合同订购分别与现货市场补货、现货市场卖货相结合的订购模型, 以及批发价合同订购与现货市场买卖双向交易联合的决策模型。分析了不同模式下回购价格、缺货成本、补货成本、现货价格、现货价格波动及风险偏好对订购决策的影响, 并通过算例仿真, 分析了各类现货市场的使用对销售商收益的影响。结果表明, 合同订购与双向现货市场结合可以充分利用现货市场即时交易的优势, 提高供应链效益;而合同订购与单向现货市场结合, 虽然可以通过合同提高供货水平, 降低库存积压风险, 但该情形需要考虑供应商的回购或补货价格, 销售商仍有一定风险。不论单向或双向现货市场与合同订购的联合, 均可使供应链的利润优于单纯合同订购的情形。     

Determining Order Quantity and Selling Price by Geometric Programming: Optimal Solution,Bounds, and Sensitivity*

This paper presents a geometric programming (GP) approach to finding a profit-maximizing selling price and order quantity for a retailer. Demand is treated as a nonlinear function of price with a constant elasticity. The proposed GP approach finds optimal solutions for both no-quantity discounts and continuous quantity discounts cases. This approach is superior to the traditional approaches of solving a system of nonlinear equations. Since the profit function is not concave, the traditional approaches may require an exhaustive search, especially for the continuous discounts schedule case. By applying readily available theories in GP, we easily can find global optimal solutions for both cases. More importantly, the GP approach provides lower and upper bounds on the optimal profit level and sensitivity results which are unavailable from the traditional approaches. These bounding and sensitivity results are further utilized to provide additional important managerial implications on pricing and lot-sizing policies.     

The Relationship Between the Board of Directors and the Performance/Value Creation in a Context of Privatization: The Case of French Companies

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the cognitive as well as the disciplinary role of one important governance mechanism that is the board of directors in a privatization context. Using a sample of privatized French companies, we examine the relationship between the size, component and structure of this mechanism to the performance and value creation on the post privatization period. Thus, the majority of our findings have support on the theory of cognitive governance, one aspect of governance that was ignored in previous research.     

Committed Versus Contingent Pricing Under Competition

Should capacitated firms set prices responsively to uncertain market conditions in a competitive environment? We study a duopoly selling differentiated substitutable products with fixed capacities under demand uncertainty, where firms can either commit to a fixed price ex ante, or elect to price contingently ex post, e.g., to charge high prices in booming markets, and low prices in slack markets. Interestingly, we analytically show that even for completely symmetric model primitives, asymmetric equilibria of strategic pricing decisions may arise, in which one firm commits statically and the other firm prices contingently; in this case, there also exists a unique mixed strategy equilibrium. Such equilibrium behavior tends to emerge, when capacity is ampler, and products are less differentiated or demand uncertainty is lower. With asymmetric fixed capacities, if demand uncertainty is low, a unique asymmetric equilibrium emerges, in which the firm with more capacity chooses committed pricing and the firm with less capacity chooses contingent pricing. We identify two countervailing profit effects of contingent pricing under competition: gains from responsively charging high price under high demand, and losses from intensified price competition under low demand. It is the latter detrimental effect that may prevent both firms from choosing a contingent pricing strategy in equilibrium. We show that the insights remain valid when capacity decisions are endogenized. We caution that responsive price changes under aggressive competition of less differentiated products can result in profit‐killing discounting.     

全球价值链贸易网络分析与国际风险传导应对

在全球化生产不断演进的背景下，参与国际分工各国在共享分工福利的同时，如何避免 外部世界的冲击?关于这一问题，若从一国所处的与其他国家的价值链贸易网络的视角给予 考察，或许能够得到一些答案.本文基于2000年~2014年世界投入产出数据，研究发现全球价值链贸易网络具有“小世界现象”和“无标度特性”等复杂网络性质，且整个网络的演化是一个循序渐进的过程.接着指出，在全球生产网络分析框架下，一国可通过强化其在全球价值链贸易网络中的集约性和广延性特征，实现自身重要程度的提高，弱化来自外部波动的影响.最后，从进口(投入)和出口(产出)两个方向对上述结论给予验证，即一国可通过增加上下游贸易对象数量并降低贸易强度分布集中度，做广做均全球外贸发展布局，弱化内外部之间风险互相传导的冲击，稳健全球价值链贸易网络.     

多因素扰动情景下应急数量弹性契约的供应链协调

研究突发事件发生导致多种因素干扰的情景下,数量弹性契约是否能实现二级供应链协调,并寻找供应链协调时最优订货与定价策略。针对市场价格稳定和随机两种情况,设定契约弹性系数为常量,分别建立市场价格稳定不变与随机波动两种情况下的应急数量弹性契约模型,寻找它们实现协调的内在约束条件,并与基准模型下的结论进行比较。然后将契约弹性系数由常量拓展为变量,判断是否同时存在最优的弹性系数和订货量,分析弹性系数的变化对于生产、订货决策及供应链整体收益的影响。研究结果证明：当弹性系数为常量时,只要对基准契约的批发价进行适当调整,供应链就能协调应对两种情景下的突发事件,此时,可以找到唯一的最优订货决策。当弹性系数为变量时,两种情景下的供应链均不存在唯一的最优订货决策,但存在唯一的最优供货决策,并且契约弹性系数的改变不会影响供应链期望收益。最后通过算例验证了上述结论的正确性。