The Implications of Utilizing Market Information and Adopting Agricultural Advice for Farmers in Developing Economies

To alleviate poverty in developing countries, governments and non‐governmental organizations disseminate two types of information: (i) agricultural advice to enable farmers to improve their operations (cost reduction, quality improvement, and process yield increase); and (ii) market information about future price/demand to enable farmers to make better production planning decisions. This information is usually disseminated free of charge. While farmers can use the market information to improve their production plans without incurring any (significant) cost, adopting agricultural advice to improve operations requires upfront investment, for example, equipment, fertilizers, pesticides, and higher quality seeds. In this study, we examine whether farmers should use market information to improve their production plans (or adopt agricultural advice to improve their operations) when they engage in Cournot competition under both uncertain market demand and uncertain process yield. Our analysis indicates that both farmers will use the market information to improve their profits in equilibrium. Hence, relative to the base case in which market information is not available, the provision of market information can improve the farmers' total welfare (i.e., total profit for both farmers). Moreover, when the underlying process yield is highly uncertain or when the products are highly heterogeneous, the provision of market information is welfare‐maximizing in the sense that the maximum total welfare of farmers is attained when both farmers utilize market information in equilibrium. Furthermore, in equilibrium, whether a farmer adopts the agricultural advice depends on the size of the requisite upfront investment. More importantly, we show that agricultural advice is not always welfare improving unless the upfront investment is sufficiently low. This result implies that to improve farmers' welfare, governments should consider offering farmer subsidies.     

The Economic Value of Market Information for Farmers in Developing Economies

In developing countries, farmers lack information for making informed production, manufacturing/selling decisions to improve their earnings. To alleviate poverty, various non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) and for‐profit companies have developed different ways to distribute information about market price, crop advisory and farming technique to farmers. We investigate a fundamental question: will information create economic value for farmers? We construct a stylized model in which farmers face an uncertain market price (demand) and must make production decisions before the market price is realized. Each farmer has an imprecise private signal and an imprecise public signal to estimate the actual market price. By examining the equilibrium outcomes associated with a Cournot competition game, we show that private signals do create value by improving farmers' welfare. However, this value deteriorates as the public signal becomes available (or more precise). In contrast, in the presence of private signals, the public signal does not always create value for the farmers. Nevertheless, both private and public signals will reduce price variation. We also consider two separate extensions that involve non‐identical private signal precisions and farmers' risk‐aversion, and we find that the same results continue to hold. More importantly, we find that the public signal can reduce welfare inequality when farmers have non‐identical private signal precisions. Also, risk‐aversion can dampen the value created by private or public information.     

政府双重干预下基于渠道商价格欺诈的农产品交易演化博弈模型

个体小规模、分散式的生产方式以及信息不对称的经营环境,导致了我国农户在农产品供应体系中的弱势地位,政府通常采用保护价收购和价格补贴等行政干预手段保护农民利益。论文构建了信息不对称条件下,考虑渠道商价格欺诈的农户、渠道商以及政府的三方演化博弈模型,分析了政府“惩罚”+“保护价收购”双重干预下的博弈演化过程及稳定策略,探讨了政府监管的边界问题,并应用实例进行了验证。研究结果表明：政府监管的概率与选择“欺诈”策略的渠道商规模和选择“销售”策略的农户规模相关;渠道商选择“欺诈”策略的概率随农产品交易规模的增大而提高,随罚金额度的增加而下降;政府的保护价收购政策不一定能保证积极的效果,不合理的折价系数可能破坏现有的市场秩序。说明了合理、适度的市场监管对于维护农产品交易市场秩序具有重要意义。     

The experience effect and pricing for agricultural products

It has been found that for a wide range of industrial products the unit prices and costs decrease by a constant percentage when production volume doubles—this is called the experience effect. This unit price behaviour is also observed for certain classes of basic agricultural products. As international market competition increases, price behaviour differences among countries may lead farmers, their organizations and governments to better understand what are the causes of the differences so that they can maintain and improve their competitive position internationally.     

Price-quality relationships in the fresh produce industry in Bali

As the number of tourist arrivals in Bali (Indonesia) continues to increase, a greater number of opportunities are emerging for local farmers to expand production to meet the increasing demand for food. While there are various production and marketing constraints which limit the ability of small farmers to individually meet the hotels quality specifications, this paper demonstrates how collector agents and distributors are able to assemble sufficient produce to meet the quality specifications imposed by the high class hotels. Intense competition between the many distributors for a share of the hotels patronage has resulted in a significant reduction in price, so much so, that the second grade produce which fails to meet the specifications of the high class hotels, often achieves a higher price in the wet market. Consequently, the small, lower class hotels, who purchase the majority of fresh produce they require from the wet market, experience much greater problems with both variable product quality and price. Not unexpectedly, under the current system of marketing, there are no financial incentives to encourage local farmers to improve product quality.     

Training,Production, and Channel Separation in ITC's E‐Choupal Network

In recent years, I.T.C. Limited (hereafter ITC) developed the “e‐Choupals” for the rural areas of India. In this new business model, ITC reaches implicit agreements with some farmers (inside the network) that they can sell the products directly to ITC at the market price in the local market, but allow the farmers, both inside and outside the network, to access valuable information through the e‐Choupals. In this study, we investigate ITC's incentive of offering such opportunities, especially to those farmers outside the network, and analyze the farmers’ strategic quantity decisions. We show that the implicit agreement behaves as a formal contract, regardless of the price elasticity of the local market: Once reaching an agreement with ITC, the farmers always give priority to delivering directly to ITC. The e‐Choupal network leads naturally to the complete separation of selling channels, provided that ITC's capacity constraint is not tight. Surprisingly, in a variety of scenarios, ITC finds it optimal to provide the best available training to the farmers outside the network. We further show that our results are not prone to potential cheating in the mandi system, the possible exploitation via postponed payments, and the stochastic effects on the market‐clearing price.     

竞争中的参考价格效应及承诺

消费者的社会感知会影响其对产品和品牌的评价。当消费者进行购买选择时,经常会受到参考价格效应的影响。而广告和价格不仅是企业经常要考虑的重要决策,还会对参考价格产生重要影响。为此,一个值得研究的的问题是：在考虑参考价格效应的情况下,企业该怎样确定其动态广告和价格策略？
为了研究该问题,本文构建了一个广告和价格的动态模型,来研究一个双寡头市场环境下两个寡头企业的价格和广告决策,并以此分析参考价格效应的作用。具体而言,我们假定企业可以采用广告承诺和价格承诺中的一种,其中前者承诺其在一段时间内的广告投入量恒定不变,而后者确保价格不变。两种策略不仅会影响消费者的购买决策,也会影响竞争对手的选择。在上述假定下,我们探讨了两个寡头企业在都采用广告承诺、都采用价格承诺及一个企业采用广告承诺而另一个企业采用价格承诺等三种不同情形下的最优广告和价格决策,并以此分析了三种情形下参考价格效应对最优的广告投入及定价策略的影响。最后,通过数值分析,探讨了不同情形下企业的最优策略选择。     

Optimal Pricing of Two Successive‐Generation Products with Trade‐in Options under Uncertainty

To entice consumers to purchase both current and next generation products, many manufacturers and retailers offer trade‐in programs that allow buyers of the first generation product to trade‐in the product and purchase the new generation product at a lower price. By considering the interactions between “forward‐looking” consumers and a firm when a trade‐in program is offered, we analyze a two‐period dynamic game to determine the optimal prices of two successive‐generation products in equilibrium, and examine the conditions under which trade‐in programs are beneficial to the firm. Our model incorporates market heterogeneity (valuation of the first generation product varies among the consumer population), product uncertainty (the incremental value of the new product is uncertain before its introduction), and consumers' forward‐looking behavior (consumers take future product valuation and prices into consideration when making purchasing decisions). With the trade‐in option, we show that consumers are willing to pay a price that is higher than their valuations of the current product. Furthermore, trade‐in programs are more beneficial to the firm when: (i) the durability of the current product is high; (ii) the market heterogeneity is low; or (iii) the uncertainty level (or the expected incremental value) of the new product is high. Finally, when the incremental value of the new product is more uncertain, consumers are more willing to purchase the current product because of the “option” value of the trade‐in programs and thus trade‐in programs can be more beneficial to the firm in this case.     

Hedonic prices of malawi burley tobacco

Tobacco is notorious for being one of the most difficult commodities to grade. Here, we determine the implicit prices of various tobacco characteristics using a hedonic price model. The factors affecting the price received for burley tobacco include reputation of the producer, month of auction and lot size in addition to variables representing quality characteristics. Many of these characteristics can be controlled by producers through production, harvesting, and curing practices. The implicit prices should help farmers evaluate whether they should adopt processes to increase quality.In spite of the large number of factors included, only about half of the price variation across lots could be explained. Thus, the difficulty of grading tobacco is confirmed. Since a universally acceptable grading system is unlikely, any attempts to develop an electronic market will likely need to include pictures of the tobacco and may need more precise measurements of characteristics such as texture, aroma, and uniformity.     

基于相对浮动价和政府补贴的订单农业协调机制研究

考虑政府提供农户生产成本补贴问题,首先构建公司在不同产品质量浮动收购价格模式下,农户、公司和政府的三阶段Stackelberg博弈模型。然后给出最大期望收益目标下农户最优生产规模、公司最优浮动收购价格和社会福利最大化的政府最优补贴率的显式表达式,并分析参数对三方(农户、公司和社会福利)利益的影响。最后进行数值分析,验证了理论结果并进一步得出了相关参数变化的影响。研究结果表明:最优生产规模、农户和公司的收益受政府补贴率、不同质量产品价格浮动幅度、自然条件风险的影响。建议政府给农户提供生产成本补贴以激励农户扩大生产规模,从而提高农户和公司收益;为了协调农户和公司利益,建议在好质量产品比例较高时,差质量产品降价幅度可以大于好质量产品价格增加幅度;而当差质量产品比例较高时,差质量产品降价幅度可以小于好质量产品价格增加幅度。     

The value relevance of accounting:: The rest of the story

When a story appears in the media reporting ‘restatements, frauds, and investigations,' how do reported dollar effects relate to value? Declines to about half the pre-event levels are observed, even when the overall market has been increasing significantly. The declines in price (cum dividend) are significantly associated with the amount of the event's effect, as reported in the media, when concurrently controlling for earnings, industry, market, and scalar (book value) effects. The Value Line evaluations of these companies' safety, financial strength, price stability, and technical ranking all deteriorate significantly post-event. Managers evaluating their accounting and controls should consider such consequences.     

On the Advantage of Quantity Leadership When Outsourcing Production to a Competitive Contract Manufacturer

This study investigates a supply chain comprising an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and a contract manufacturer (CM), in which the CM acts as both upstream partner and downstream competitor to the OEM. The two parties can engage in one of three Cournot competition games: a simultaneous game, a sequential game with the OEM as the Stackelberg leader, and a sequential game with the CM as the Stackelberg leader. On the basis of these three basic games, this study investigates the two parties' Stackelberg leadership/followership decisions. When the outsourcing quantity and wholesale price are exogenously given, either party may prefer Stackelberg leadership or followership. For example, when the wholesale price or the proportion of production outsourced to the CM is lower than a threshold value, both parties prefer Stackelberg leadership and, consequently, play a simultaneous game in the consumer market. When the outsourcing quantity and wholesale price are decision variables, the competitive CM sets a wholesale price sufficiently low to allow both parties to coexist in the market, and the OEM outsources its entire production to this CM. This study also examines the impact of the supply chain parties' bargaining power on contract outcomes by considering a wholesale price that is determined via the generalized Nash bargaining scheme, finding a Stackelberg equilibrium to be sustained when the CM's degree of bargaining power is great and the non‐competitive CM's wholesale price is high.     

Technology Choice and Capacity Portfolios under Emissions Regulation

We study the impact of emissions tax and emissions cap‐and‐trade regulation on a firm's technology choice and capacity decisions. We show that emissions price uncertainty under cap‐and‐trade results in greater expected profit than a constant emissions price under an emissions tax, which contradicts popular arguments that the greater uncertainty under cap‐and‐trade will erode value. We further show that two operational drivers underlie this result: (i) the firm's option not to operate, which effectively right‐censors the uncertain emissions price; and (ii) dispatch flexibility, which is the firm's ability to first deploy its most profitable capacity given the realized emissions price. In addition to these managerial insights, we also explore policy implications: the effect of emissions price level, and the effect of investment and production subsidies. Through an illustrative example, we show that production subsidies of higher investment and production cost technologies (such as carbon capture and storage technologies) have no effect on the firm's optimal total capacity when firms own a portfolio of both clean and dirty technologies, but that investment subsidies of these technologies increase the firm's total capacity, conditionally increasing expected emissions. A subsidy of a lower production cost technology, on the other hand, has no effect on the firm's optimal total capacity in multi‐technology portfolios, regardless of whether the subsidy is a production or investment subsidy.     

全渠道零售下“Showrooms”对需求分布、定价和收益的影响研究

作为一种新兴的线下体验、线上购买的商业运作模式,展厅（Showrooms）在全渠道零售领域发展迅速。基于消费者效用分别建立单一网络渠道和"网络+实体"渠道下零售商开设Showrooms前后的利润模型,对比分析固定销售价格和优化定价两种情形下Showrooms对定价、市场需求、利润和退货率的影响。研究表明：（1）单一网络渠道下,网络渠道价格固定时,开设Showrooms可使市场总需求增加,总利润在展厅运营成本较低时增加;网络渠道价格优化时,开设Showrooms可使网络渠道价格、总需求和总利润在展厅运营成本较低时增加,但固定价格情形下总利润的增幅更大。（2）"网络+实体"渠道下,开设Showrooms可使总需求和总利润均在展厅运营成本较低及网络退货率和网购不便利成本较高时增加,而且仅优化网络渠道价格时的增幅最大,网络和实体渠道价格均固定时次之;价格优化的最终趋势是全渠道同款同价。（3）开设Showrooms可使零售商总的网络退货率和退货量都下降。     

配额——交易机制下动态批量生产和减排投资策略研究

随着我国碳排放交易市场的建立和发展,在碳排放约束下逐步降低单位产出的碳排放水平成为企业生产经营管理中的中长期约束性目标。本文在一个多周期决策模型中研究了配额-交易机制下企业的最优动态批量生产、碳排放权交易和减排投资联合决策问题。生产商在整个决策周期期初决定是否进行减排投资以及投资规模,根据每个周期的生产计划决定减排设备的运行计划。根据节能减排技术的特点,本文假设生产商运行减排设备时不仅降低了产品的单位生产碳排放量,而且降低了产品的单位生产成本。本文基于广义Benders分解法对模型进行了最优性分析,得到了最优生产决策和最优减排投资决策的一些基本性质,并通过数值实验分析了碳排放配额和碳排放权价格对生产商总成本、总排放以及减排投资决策的影响。本文的数值实验分析结果发现:(1)当碳交易市场上的碳排放权充足时,减少碳排放配额或改变碳排放配额的分配方式并不能影响生产商的碳排放水平;(2)碳排放权价格是影响生产商的碳排放水平和减排投资规模的关键因素;(3)随着碳排放权价格的上升,即使拥有足够的碳排放配额,生产商仍会不断提高减排投资规模以获得减排收益。研究结果对碳排放交易体系下生产企业进行减排技术投资具有较强的管理启示。     

Entry Deterrence of Capacitated Competition Using Price and Non‐Price Strategies

We analyze the role of pricing and branding in an incumbent firm's decision when facing competition from an entrant firm with limited capacity. We do so by studying two price competition models (Stackelberg and Nash), where we consider the incumbent's entry‐deterrence pricing strategy based on a potential entrant's capacity size. In an extension, we also study a branding model, where the incumbent firm, in addition to pricing, can also invest in influencing market preference for its product. With these models, we study conditions under which the incumbent firm may block the entrant (i.e., prevent entry without any market actions), deter the entrant (i.e., stop entry with suitable market actions) or accommodate the entrant (i.e., allow entry and compete), and how the entrant will allocate its limited capacity across its own and the new market, if entry occurs. We also study the timing difference between the two different dynamics of the price competition models and find that the incumbent's first‐mover advantage benefits both the incumbent and the entrant. Interestingly, the entrant firm's profits are not monotonically increasing in its capacity even when it is costless to build capacity. In the branding model, we show that in some cases, the incumbent may even increase its price and successfully deter entry by investing in consumer's preference for its product. Finally, we incorporate demand uncertainty into our model and show that the incumbent benefits from demand uncertainty while the entrant may be worse off depending on the magnitude of demand uncertainty and its capacity.     

期货保证金调整对中国钢材市场价格发现的影响研究

近年来,上海期货交易所频繁调整大宗商品期货的交易保证金,以期抑制市场风险。这种调整措施给中国钢材市场的价格发现过程究竟会带来何种影响,是理论界和实践界关注的问题。本文针对上海期货交易所于2010年11月29日上调钢材期货保证金比例和2012年5月2日下调保证金比例这两项措施,采用基于VECM模型的信息份额方法,定量测算了中国三类钢材市场对钢材价格发现过程的贡献。研究结果表明,调升期货保证金的措施可抑制钢材市场价格波动风险、提升期货市场的价格发现功能;调降期货保证金后,期货市场对价格发现过程的贡献度仍占1/3以上;电子交易市场价格发现功能受期货保证金调整影响较大。在钢材期货价格剧烈波动时,电子交易市场作为价格发现工具能引导其它两类市场价格。     

Incentive for Peer‐to‐Peer Knowledge Sharing among Farmers in Developing Economies

This study examines the peer‐to‐Peer interactions among farmers when both knowledge learning and sharing are available. We construct a stylized model in which heterogeneous farmers are endowed with their initial production capabilities and can post questions in the platform for help. A representative expert regularly monitors the forum and provides answers to the farmers’ questions, but may be non‐responsive sometimes due to the limited capacity. A knowledgeable core user (farmer) can choose to be silent or responsive, and is allowed to strategically determine the informativeness of her answers. The farmers face the minimum quantity restriction for attracting the buyers, and must make production before the time of sales. We show that in equilibrium the core user never provides answers that are more informative than the expert's, irrespective of her ex ante knowledge level. Redesigning or restructuring the platform does not help eliminate this inefficient knowledge provision. We also find that hiring more staff to frequently monitor the forum turns out to be detrimental for the peer‐to‐peer interactions. Moreover, the competition on knowledge sharing between the platform expert and the core user features strategic complementarity sometimes but strategic substitution at other times. Third, charging for the platform usage may discourage uninformative answers, but it could also discourage the core user from sharing knowledge with other farmers.     

基于风险规避的双渠道制造商在线推介策略研究

研究了风险规避对双渠道制造商在线推介策略的影响。首先，以零售商、制造商风险中性为基准模型考察制造商推介策略，发现当推介市场规模较小时，制造商仅推介官方商城；当推介市场规模较大时，制造商选择都推介策略。然后，分别考察零售商或制造商风险规避特性对推介策略的影响，发现当推介市场规模居中时，若市场竞争强度较小，则随着风险规避程度的增大，制造商推介策略由仅推介官方商城转变为都推介；若市场竞争强度较大，则零售商风险规避情况下推介策略由都推介转变为仅推介官方商城，但制造商风险规避情况下推介策略不变。最后，通过算例形式分析了零售商和制造商都风险规避时制造商的推介策略。     

Dynamic Impacts of a Catastrophic Production Event: The Foot‐and‐Mouth Disease Case

In foot‐and‐mouth disease (FMD) free countries, the occurrence of an FMD outbreak is a rare event with potentially large economic losses. We explore the dynamic effects of an FMD outbreak on market variables and economic surplus taking into account the largely neglected issue of farm bankruptcy. Simulations are performed on a stylized agricultural economy, which is a net exporter before the outbreak. We find complex dynamic market effects when the farm credit market suffers from information imperfections leading to farm closure. Welfare effects are also dramatically altered. Domestic consumers may lose in the long run from an FMD outbreak because domestic supply contracts. On the other hand, farmers able to resist this event may ultimately gain. Our analysis also shows that these effects are not monotone, making any efficient policy response to this catastrophic event quite challenging.