Why Do We Observe Stockless Operations on the Internet? Stockless Operations Under Competition

Due to the proliferation of electronic commerce and the development of Internet technologies, many firms have considered new pricing‐inventory models. In this paper, we study the role of stockless (i.e., zero‐inventory) operations in online retailing by a considering duopoly competition in which two retailers compete to maximize profit by jointly optimizing their pricing and inventory decisions. In our model, the retailers are allowed to choose either an in‐stock policy or stockless operations with a discounted price. We first present the characteristics and properties of the equilibrium. We then demonstrate that the traditional outcome of asymmetric Bertrand competition is observed under head‐to‐head competition. However, when the two firms choose different operational policies, with corresponding optimal pricing, they can share the market under certain conditions. Finally, we report interesting observations on the interaction between pricing and inventory decisions obtained from an extensive computational study.     

TIME‐BASED PRICING AND LEADTIME POLICIES FOR A BUILD‐TO‐ORDER MANUFACTURER

We studied time‐based policies on pricing and leadtime for a build‐to‐order and direct sales manufacturer. It is assumed that the utility of the product varies among potential customers and decreases over time, and that a potential customer will place an order if his or her utility is higher than the manufacturer's posted price. Once an order is placed, it will be delivered to the customer after a length of time called “leadtime.” Because of the decrease in a customer's utility during leadtime, a customer will cancel the order if the utility falls below the ordering price before the order is received. The manufacturer may choose to offer discounted prices to customers who would otherwise cancel their orders. We discuss two price policies: common discounted price and customized discounted price. In the common discounted price policy, the manufacturer offers a single lower price to the customers; in the customized discounted price policy, the manufacturer offers the customers separately for individual new prices. Our analytical and numerical studies show that the discounted price policies results in higher revenue and that the customized discounted price policy significantly outperforms the common discounted price policy when product utility decreases rapidly. We also study two leadtime policies when production cost decreases over time. The first uses a fixed leadtime, and the second allows the leadtime to vary dynamically over time. We find that the dynamic leadtime policy significantly outperforms the fixed leadtime policy when the product cost decreases rapidly.     

Cooperative Advertising and Pricing in a Dynamic Stochastic Supply Chain: Feedback Stackelberg Strategies

Cooperative (co‐op) advertising is an important instrument for aligning manufacturer and retailer decisions in supply chains. In this, the manufacturer announces a co‐op advertising policy, i.e., a participation rate that specifies the percentage of the retailer's advertising expenditure that it will provide. In addition, it also announces the wholesale price. In response, the retailer chooses its optimal advertising and pricing policies. We model this supply chain problem as a stochastic Stackelberg differential game whose dynamics follows Sethi's stochastic sales‐advertising model. We obtain the condition when offering co‐op advertising is optimal for the manufacturer. We provide in feedback form the optimal advertising and pricing policies for the manufacturer and the retailer. We contrast the results with the advertising and price decisions of the vertically integrated channel, and suggest a method for coordinating the channel.     

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.     

Dynamic Pricing and Lead‐Time Policies for Make‐to‐Order Systems*

Make‐to‐order firms use different approaches for managing their lead‐times and pricing in the face of changing market conditions. A particular firm's approach may be largely dictated by environmental constraints. For example, it makes little sense to carefully manage lead‐time if its effect on demand is muted, as it can be in situations where leadtime is difficult for the market to gauge or requires investment to estimate. Similarly, it can be impractical to change capacity and price. However, environmental constraints are likely to become less of an issue in the future with the expanding e‐business infrastructure, and this trend raises questions into how to manage effectively the marketing mix of price and lead‐time in a more “friction‐free” setting. We study a simple model of a make‐to‐order firm, and we examine policies for adjusting price and capacity in response to periodic and unpredictable shifts in how the market values price and lead‐time. Our analysis suggests that maintaining a fixed capacity while using lead‐time and/or price to absorb changes in the market will be most attractive when stability in throughput and profit are highly valued, but in volatile markets, this stability comes at a cost of low profits. From a pure profit maximization perspective, it is best to strive for a short and consistent lead‐times by adjusting both capacity and price in response to market changes.     

Strategic Liquidity Provision in Limit Order Markets

We characterize and prove the existence of Nash equilibrium in a limit order market with a finite number of risk‐neutral liquidity providers. We show that if there is sufficient adverse selection, then pointwise optimization (maximizing in p for each q) in a certain nonlinear pricing game produces a Nash equilibrium in the limit order market. The need for a sufficient degree of adverse selection does not vanish as the number of liquidity providers increases. Our formulation of the nonlinear pricing game encompasses various specifications of informed and liquidity trading, including the case in which nature chooses whether the market‐order trader is informed or a liquidity trader. We solve for an equilibrium analytically in various examples and also present examples in which the first‐order condition for pointwise optimization does not define an equilibrium, because the amount of adverse selection is insufficient.     

A Comparison of Product Take‐Back Compliance Schemes

Product take‐back regulation, under which firms finance the collection and treatment of their end‐of‐life products, is a widely used environmental program. One of the most common compliance schemes is collectively with cost allocation by market share. As an alternative, individual compliance scheme is considered. Assuming that firms can choose their compliance scheme, we compare these two schemes with respect to the costs they impose on firms and environmental benefits. We show that high collection targets and large market shares among firms in a collective compliance scheme make it more cost‐effective. From an environmental benefits perspective, the prevailing intuition is that collection rates will be higher under collective schemes but individual compliance will provide more incentive for higher recyclability levels. Our results challenge both of these premises. We identify conditions under which collection rates are higher when firms comply individually and recyclability levels are higher when firms comply collectively and allocate costs with respect to market shares.     

Static and Dynamic Pricing of Excess Capacity in a Make‐to‐Order Environment

We consider a make‐to‐order manufacturer that serves two customer classes: core customers who pay a fixed negotiated price, and “fill‐in” customers who make submittal decisions based on the current price set by the firm. Using a Markovian queueing model, we determine how much the firm can gain by explicitly accounting for the status of its production facility in making pricing decisions. Specifically, we examine three pricing policies: (1) static, state‐independent pricing, (2) constant pricing up to a cutoff state, and (3) general state‐dependent pricing. We determine properties of each policy, and illustrate numerically the financial gains that the firm can achieve by following each policy as compared with simpler policies. Our main result is that constant pricing up to a cutoff state can dramatically outperform a state‐independent policy, while at the same time achieving most of the increase in revenue achievable from general state‐dependent pricing. Thus, we find that constant pricing up to a cutoff state presents an attractive tradeoff between ease of implementation and revenue gain. When the costs of policy design and implementation are taken into account, this simple heuristic may actually out‐perform general state‐dependent pricing in some settings.     

INVENTORY RATIONING AND SHIPMENT FLEXIBILITY ALTERNATIVES FOR DIRECT MARKET FIRMS

This paper investigates inventory‐rationing policies of interest to firms operating in a direct market channel. We model a single product with two demand classes, where one class requests a lower order fulfillment lead time but pays a higher price. Demand for each class follows a Poisson process. Inventory is fed by a production system with exponentially distributed build times. We study rationing policies in which the firm either blocks or backlogs orders for the lower priority customers when inventory drops below a certain level. We compare the performance of these rationing policies with a pure first‐come, first‐serve policy under various scenarios for customer response to delay: lost sales, backlog, and a combination of lost sales and backlog.     

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS POLICY,COMPETITION AND INNOVATION

To what extent and in what form should the intellectual property rights (IPR) of innovators be protected? Should a company with a large technology lead over its rivals receive the same IPR protection as a company with a more limited advantage? In this paper, we develop a dynamic framework for the study of the interactions between IPR and competition, in particular to understand the impact of such policies on future incentives. The economy consists of many industries and firms engaged in cumulative (step‐by‐step) innovation. IPR policy regulates whether followers in an industry can copy the technology of the leader. We prove the existence of a steady‐state equilibrium and characterize some of its properties. We then quantitatively investigate the implications of different types of IPR policy on the equilibrium growth rate and welfare. The most important result from this exercise is that full patent protection is not optimal; instead, optimal policy involves state‐dependent IPR protection, providing greater protection to technology leaders that are further ahead than those that are close to their followers. This is because of a trickle‐down effect: providing greater protection to firms that are further ahead of their followers than a certain threshold increases the R&D incentives also for all technology leaders that are less advanced than this threshold.     

水平差异产品的内生定价策略选择

本文分析了一个存在定价策略选择下的三阶段Hotelling双头垄断模型,其中厂商可以选择采用单一定价策略或者歧视定价策略。模型的子博弈精炼纳什均衡表明厂商或者同时采用单一定价策略,或者同时采用歧视一价策略。当歧视定价的边际成本相对单一定价的边际成本不太高,或者消费乾注重产品特性差异时,厂商会同时选择歧视定价策略,尽管单一定价下厂商的利润要明显高于歧视定价下的利润;当歧视定价的边际成本相对较高或者消费者不太注重产品特性差异时,单一定价将成为厂商的最优选择。最后本文从社会最优的角度分析比较了两种这价策略下的社会净福利水平。     

Equilibrium Wage‐Tenure Contracts

In this study we consider a labor market matching model where firms post wage‐tenure contracts and workers, both employed and unemployed, search for new job opportunities. Given workers are risk averse, we establish there is a unique equilibrium in the environment considered. Although firms in the market make different offers in equilibrium, all post a wage‐tenure contract that implies a worker's wage increases smoothly with tenure at the firm. As firms make different offers, there is job turnover, as employed workers move jobs as the opportunity arises. This implies the increase in a worker's wage can be due to job‐to‐job movements as well as wage‐tenure effects. Further, there is a nondegenerate equilibrium distribution of initial wage offers that is differentiable on its support except for a mass point at the lowest initial wage. We also show that relevant characteristics of the equilibrium can be written as explicit functions of preferences and the other market parameters.     

竞争环境下客户服务投入对企业利润影响的均衡分析

客户服务投入是企业吸引新顾客和维持现有顾客的重要手段之一。然而,服务投入究竟是否能给企业带来价值？对于这一问题,业界和学界都没有明确的答案。本文通过建模的方法研究在竞争的市场环境下,固有的市场因素对客户服务投入价值的影响。研究发现,服务竞争的市场均衡结构是两家厂商都投入客户服务。服务投入给企业带来的价值随着产品差异度的提高而提高,随着厂商自身市场份额的增加而增加。即,在产品差异度高的市场,服务投入更容易给企业带来价值。而在集中度高的市场,服务投入更容易给市场份额大的企业带来价值。     

Markov Perfect Industry Dynamics With Many Firms

We propose an approximation method for analyzing Ericson and Pakes (1995)‐style dynamic models of imperfect competition. We define a new equilibrium concept that we call oblivious equilibrium, in which each firm is assumed to make decisions based only on its own state and knowledge of the long‐run average industry state, but where firms ignore current information about competitors' states. The great advantage of oblivious equilibria is that they are much easier to compute than are Markov perfect equilibria. Moreover, we show that, as the market becomes large, if the equilibrium distribution of firm states obeys a certain “light‐tail” condition, then oblivious equilibria closely approximate Markov perfect equilibria. This theorem justifies using oblivious equilibria to analyze Markov perfect industry dynamics in Ericson and Pakes (1995)‐style models with many firms.     

A Choice‐Based Dynamic Programming Approach for Setting Opaque Prices

Opaque pricing is a form of pricing where certain characteristics of the product or service are hidden from the consumer until after purchase. In essence, opaque selling transforms a differentiated good into a commodity. Opaque pricing has become popular in service pricing as it allows firms to sell their differentiated product at higher prices to regular brand loyal customers while simultaneously selling to non‐brand loyal customers at discounted prices. We use a nested logit model in combination with logistic regression and dynamic programming to illustrate how a service firm can optimally set prices on an opaque sales channel. The choice model allows the characterization of consumer trade‐offs when purchasing opaque products while the dynamic programming approach allows the characterization of the optimal pricing policy as a function of inventory and time remaining. We compare optimal prices and expected revenues when dynamic pricing is restricted to daily price changes. We provide an illustrative example using data from an opaque selling mechanism ( Hotwire.com ) and a Washington DC‐based hotel.     

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.     

DISTANCE TO FRONTIER,SELECTION, AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

We analyze an economy where firms undertake both innovation and adoption of technologies from the world technology frontier. The selection of high‐skill managers and firms is more important for innovation than for adoption. As the economy approaches the frontier, selection becomes more important. Countries at early stages of development pursue an investment‐based strategy, which relies on existing firms and managers to maximize investment but sacrifices selection. Closer to the world technology frontier, economies switch to an innovation‐based strategy with short‐term relationships, younger firms, less investment, and better selection of firms and managers. We show that relatively backward economies may switch out of the investment‐based strategy too soon, so certain policies such as limits on product market competition or investment subsidies, which encourage the investment‐based strategy, may be beneficial. However, these policies may have significant long‐run costs because they make it more likely that a society will be trapped in the investment‐based strategy and fail to converge to the world technology frontier. (JEL: O31, O33, O38, O40, L16)     

Bertrand寡占市场企业交叉持股时定价策略和最优持股的研究

本文首先研究了公司间交叉持股的利益分配问题,导出了n个公司间交叉持股的利润分配公式。以此为基础,导出了Bertrand寡占市场公司间交叉持股时价格反应函数和均衡价格的一般表达式。通过构建一个两阶段动态博弈,着重研究了Bertrand双寡头市场两厂商交叉持股时的均衡策略问题,给出了厂商间均衡定价与最优持股,分析了均衡策略对厂商经济行为及市场绩效的影响。研究结果表明,可替代品市场的两厂商间交叉持股具有反竞争、促合作的效应。较之非交叉持股,均衡交叉持股提高了均衡价格水平,降低了两厂商各自的产量水平,使各自在较低产量水平下获得较高的利润,从而实现了两厂商间双赢的局面。然而,交叉持股将导致消费者剩余减少,社会经济福利降低。     

纵向差异下的连接外部性和网络结构分析

在寡头竞争的市场环境里,相互竞争的企业通常会与竞争对手建立连接,从而影响他们在产品市场上竞争的方式。本文我们建立两阶段博弈模型研究企业建立连接的激励以及由此而形成的网络结构形态。在博弈的第一期,具有纵向差异化的企业决定是否与其竞争对手建立连接;企业观察到连接结果后在第二期进行价格竞争。本文的分析显示均衡网络结构与连接效应、连接成本和消费者偏好有关,均衡网络可能仅是一个企业与其它所有企业建立连接的星型网络结构,也可能是没有任何企业建立连接的空网络结构。本文还分析了均衡网络和社会有效网络之间的关系,发现均衡网络和社会有效网络并不总是一致的,从社会计划者的角度看,企业建立连接可能存在激励不足,因此公共政策应该鼓励企业建立连接。     

Measurement and Pricing of Risk in Insurance Markets

The theory and practice of risk measurement provides a point of intersection between risk management, economic theories of choice under risk, financial economics, and actuarial pricing theory. This article provides a review of these interrelationships, from the perspective of an insurance company seeking to price the risks that it underwrites. We examine three distinct approaches to insurance risk pricing, all being contingent on the concept of risk measures. Risk measures can be interpreted as representations of risk orderings, as well as absolute (monetary) quantifiers of risk. The first approach can be called an "axiomatic" one, whereby the price for risks is calculated according to a functional determined by a set of desirable properties. The price of a risk is directly interpreted as a risk measure and may be induced by an economic theory of price under risk. The second approach consists in contextualizing the considerations of the risk bearer by embedding them in the market where risks are traded. Prices are calculated by equilibrium arguments, where each economic agent's optimization problem follows from the minimization of a risk measure. Finally, in the third approach, weaknesses of the equilibrium approach are addressed by invoking alternative valuation techniques, the leading paradigm among which is arbitrage pricing. Such models move the focus from individual decision takers to abstract market price systems and are thus more parsimonious in the amount of information that they require. In this context, risk measures, instead of characterizing individual agents, are used for determining the set of price systems that would be viable in a market.