Designing Multi‐Attribute Procurement Mechanisms for Assortment Planning

This research investigates how to design procurement mechanisms for assortment planning. We consider that a retailer buys directly from a manufacturer who possesses private information about the per‐unit variable cost and per‐variety setup cost. We first develop a screening model to assist the retailer in integrating assortment planning into supply chain contracting processes when only one manufacturer is available. We demonstrate that the screening mechanism is optimal among all feasible procurement strategies. When there are multiple competing manufacturers, we propose a supply contract auctioning mechanism and evaluate its performance. In this mechanism, the retailer announces a contract menu and the manufacturer that bids the highest upfront fee paid to the retailer wins the auction. The winner then chooses and executes a contract from the contract menu. We show that when the retailer uses the optimal screening contract menu as the object of the auction, it achieves the optimal procurement outcome if the screening contract menu does not pay rent to any manufacturer type. This finding sheds light on the connection between screening and auction mechanisms when there exists multi‐dimensional private information.     

供应链中基于信息更新的订货时间及价格联合决策研究

文章考虑在信息可更新的情况下,由一个制造商和一个零售商组成的供应链中订货时间及价格的联合决策问题.在模型中,制造商为零售商提供多次订货时间选择及相应的订货价格,而零售商可以在销售季节开始前自由选择订货时间并享受相应的价格.文章以不同订货时间对信息更新程度的影响为着眼点,将订货时间作为内生决策变量,突破了已有文献中仅限于两次订货时间选择的局限,分别从集中决策和分散决策两个角度建立供应链节点企业的利润模型,并在分散决策情况下引入收益共享契约,寻找帕累托改进.最后通过数值试验证明了该模型的有效性.     

政府奖惩下闭环供应链中信息不对称时的最优合同设计

考虑政府奖惩机制,在制造商依赖零售商回收的闭环供应链中,当零售商的回收成本信息是不对称时,为探究制造商最优激励合同设计问题,本文构建制造商与零售商的Stackelberg博弈模型,通过运用委托代理理论和显示原理求得实现对零售商信息甄别的最优两部定价合同菜单,并分析该合同菜单性质以及信息不对称的影响,最后探讨政府奖惩机制对均衡结果的影响。研究发现,随着零售商回收效率降低,制造商会提高批发价、减少转移支付。回收成本信息不对称会使制造商和供应链利润减少,零售商利润增加。政府奖惩机制的出台会使制造商降低批发价、提高转移支付。当政府的回收标准较高而奖惩力度较小时,奖惩机制的出台会使供应链利润减少,否则,会使供应链利润增加。     

A Note on Optimal Selling to Asymmetric Retailers

I consider a channel with one manufacturer selling the same product to two retailers engaged in imperfect competition. The retailers are asymmetric because one has a lower marginal selling cost (or a higher demand potential) than the other. I design the manufacturer's optimal selling mechanism, whereby the manufacturer must offer the same contract options to both retailers. I fully characterize the manufacturer's optimal selling mechanism for varying degrees of retailer asymmetry and competition intensity. I find that under certain conditions, the manufacturer is better off selling a larger quantity through the high‐cost (or low‐demand potential) retailer. I also show how the optimal mechanism can be implemented using a menu of two‐part tariffs with quantity controls.     

双向期权在供应链协调中的应用

本文分析了在由批发价格合同和双向期权合同组成的合同菜单下零售商的最优订货策略,并给出了能够协调供应链的合同菜单形式。本文所给出的合同菜单形式具有独立于随机需求的概率分布的性质,从而具有很好的适用性和鲁棒性。     

Dynamic Logit With Choice Aversion

We characterize a generalization of discounted logistic choice that incorporates a parameter to capture different views the agent might have about the costs and benefits of larger choice sets. The discounted logit model used in the empirical literature is the special case that displays a “preference for flexibility” in the sense that the agent always prefers to add additional items to a menu. Other cases display varying levels of “choice aversion,” where the agent prefers to remove items from a menu if their ex ante value is below a threshold. We show that higher choice aversion, as measured by dislike of bigger menus, also corresponds to an increased preference for putting off decisions as late as possible.     

Price Setting With Menu Cost for Multiproduct Firms

We model the decisions of a multiproduct firm that faces a fixed “menu” cost: once it is paid, the firm can adjust the price of all its products. We characterize analytically the steady state firm's decisions in terms of the structural parameters: the variability of the flexible prices, the curvature of the profit function, the size of the menu cost, and the number of products sold. We provide expressions for the steady state frequency of adjustment, the hazard rate of price adjustments, and the size distribution of price changes, all in terms of the structural parameters. We study analytically the impulse response of aggregate prices and output to a monetary shock. The size of the output response and its duration both increase with the number of products; they more than double as the number of products goes from 1 to 10, quickly converging to the response of Taylor's staggered price model.     

Menu Costs,Multiproduct Firms,and Aggregate Fluctuations

Golosov and Lucas recently argued that a menu‐cost model, when made consistent with salient features of the microdata, predicts approximate monetary neutrality. I argue here that their model misses, in fact, two important features of the data. First, the distribution of the size of price changes in the data is very dispersed. Second, in the data many price changes are temporary. I study an extension of the simple menu‐cost model to a multiproduct setting in which firms face economies of scope in adjusting posted and regular prices. The model, because of its ability to replicate this additional set of microeconomic facts, predicts real effects of monetary policy shocks that are much greater than those in Golosov and Lucas and nearly as large as those in the Calvo model. Although episodes of sales account for roughly 40% of all goods sold in retail stores, the model predicts that these episodes do not contribute much to the flexibility of the aggregate price level.     

A Unique Costly Contemplation Representation

We study preferences over menus which can be represented as if the individual is uncertain of her tastes, but is able to engage in costly contemplation before selecting an alternative from a menu. Since contemplation is costly, our key axiom, aversion to contingent planning, reflects the individual's preference to learn the menu from which she will be choosing prior to engaging in contemplation about her tastes for the alternatives. Our representation models contemplation strategies as subjective signals over a subjective state space. The subjectivity of the state space and the information structure in our representation makes it difficult to identify them from the preference. To overcome this issue, we show that each signal can be modeled in reduced form as a measure over ex post utility functions without reference to a state space. We show that in this reduced‐form representation, the set of measures and their costs are uniquely identified. Finally, we provide a measure of comparative contemplation costs and characterize the special case of our representation where contemplation is costless.     

进口国质量管制条件下的出口国企业创新与产业升级

本文从进口国产品质量管制角度来研究出口国企业创新和被动产业升级的内在机制。进口国产品质量管制构成出口国出口企业的市场进入障碍,后者必须通过工艺创新来达到最低质量标准并降低成本保持优势,由此出口国实现被动性产业升级。本文构建理论模型证明了出口企业进行创新必须满足的条件,并且出口企业创新利润会随着进口国质量管制水平高低而变化,存在令出口企业创新利润最大化的质量管制水平。同时出口企业定价能力提高能促进被动性产业升级,出口国政府也能在被动性产业升级过程中发挥积极影响。     

Motivating Retail Marketing Effort: Optimal Contract Design

We study a distribution channel where a manufacturer relies on a sales agent for selling the product, and for investing in the most appropriate marketing effort. The agent's effort is hard to monitor. In addition, the cost of effort is the agent's private information. These impose challenges to the manufacturer in its endeavor to influence the agent's marketing effort provisions and to allocate profit between the two parties. We propose two contract forms. The franchise fee contract is a two‐part price schedule specifying a variable wholesale price and a fixed franchise fee. The retail price maintenance contract links the allowed retail price that the agent charges customers with total payment to the manufacturer and sales level. Under information asymmetry, for implementing either contract form, the manufacturer needs to offer a menu of contracts, hoping to invoke the “revelation principle” when the agent picks a certain contract from that menu. We show that the two contract forms perform differently, and each party's preference toward a particular contract form is linked with the total reservation profit level and/or the sales agent's cost type. We provide managerial guidelines for the manufacturer in selecting a better contract form under different conditions.     

Stochastic Choice and Consideration Sets

We model a boundedly rational agent who suffers from limited attention. The agent considers each feasible alternative with a given (unobservable) probability, the attention parameter, and then chooses the alternative that maximizes a preference relation within the set of considered alternatives. We show that this random choice rule is the only one for which the impact of removing an alternative on the choice probability of any other alternative is asymmetric and menu independent. Both the preference relation and the attention parameters are identified uniquely by stochastic choice data.     

HOUSING FINANCE AND MONETARY POLICY

We document three facts concerning how the structure of housing finance affects the monetary transmission mechanism: first, the characteristics of residential mortgage markets differ markedly across industrialized countries; second, the impact of monetary policy shocks to residential investment and house prices is significantly stronger in those countries with larger flexibility/development of mortgage markets; third, the transmission to consumption is stronger only in those countries where mortgage equity release is common and mortgage contracts are predominantly of the variable‐rate type. We then build a two‐sector DSGE model with financial constraints to rationalize those facts.     

Optimal Procurement Design of an Assembly Supply Chain with Information Asymmetry

We study a decentralized assembly supply chain in which an assembler (she) assembles a set of n components, each produced by a different supplier (he), into a final product to satisfy an uncertain market demand. Each supplier holds private cost information to himself, for which the assembler only has a subjective estimate. Furthermore, the assembler believes that the suppliers' costs follow a joint discrete probability distribution. The assembler aims to design an optimal menu of contracts to maximize her own expected profit. The assembler's problem is a complex multi‐dimensional constrained optimization problem. We prove that there exists a unique optimal menu of contracts for the assembler, and we further develop an efficient algorithm with a complexity of O(n) to compute the optimal contract. In addition, we conduct a comprehensive sensitivity analysis to analyze how environmental parameters affect individual firm's performance and the value of information to the assembler, to each supplier, and to the supply chain. Our results suggest that each supplier's private cost information becomes more valuable to the assembler and each supplier when the average market demand increases or when the final product unit revenue increases. Surprisingly, when a supplier's cost volatility increases and its mean remains the same, the value of information to the assembler or to each supplier does not necessarily increase. Furthermore, we show that when the suppliers' cost distributions become more positively correlated, the suppliers are always worse off, but the assembler is better off. However, the value of information for the assembler might increase or decrease.     

Development and teaching a computer-assisted course in production planning

Abstract. Course development and student activities are described for a successful computer-assisted senior level course in production planning. Development was guided by the view that students must (1) understand the elements being integrated, (2) understand the problems that are being resolved through integration, and (3) participate in the integration activity. Production planning is treated as a hierarchy of individual decision situations which are to be integrated. Each decision is assisted by a software-based technique. A menu program and a common database were developed to allow a student to become the 'integrator' by directing the information flow among the individual decision situations. The paper describes the development tasks, the course elements, and student activities which provide guidelines for others developing similar courses.     

The Impact of Information Sharing on Supply Chain Performance under Asymmetric Information

The use of screening contracts is a common approach to solve supply chain coordination problems under asymmetric information. One main assumption in this context is that managers without specific incentives would rather use their private information strategically than reveal it truthfully. This harms supply chain performance. This study investigates the impact of information sharing in a principal‐agent setting that is typical for many supply chain transactions. We conduct a laboratory experiment to test whether information sharing has an influence on supply chain coordination. We find that information sharing within the supply chain has two positive effects. First, information sharing reduces the inefficiencies resulting from information deficits if there is a certain amount of trust in the supply chain. Second, communication can limit out‐of‐equilibrium behavior with a small impact on the firm's own payoff, but a large impact on the supply chain partner. Furthermore, we find that both effects are amplified when communication takes place in an environment that allows the less informed supply chain party to punish or to reward the better informed party. Although our extended mechanisms substantially enhance the poor performance of the theoretically optimal coordination contract menu, we find no mechanism that implements supply chain performance superior to the theoretically predicted second‐best level.     

Anticipating Regret: Why Fewer Options May Be Better

We study preferences over menus which can be represented as if the agent selects an alternative from a menu and experiences regret if her choice is ex post inferior. Since regret arises from comparisons between the alternative selected and the other available alternatives, our axioms reflect the agent's desire to limit her options. We prove that our representation is essentially unique. We also introduce two measures of comparative regret attitudes and relate them to our representation. Finally, we explore the formal connection between the present work and the literature on temptation.     

技术整合机制、整合能力和技术合作效果关系研究：以我国某重点汽车零配件公司为例

技术合作是发展中国家企业提升技术能力一个重要途径.而有效的技术合作和技术转移却是一个相当复杂的动态过程.技术接受方所采取的整合机制以及其自身的整合能力是影响技术合作效果的重要因素.本文以我国某重点汽车零配件企业与国外公司之间的技术合作为例,借助LISREL8.7软件进行结构方程建模,研究发现技术接受方组织所采取的整合机制以及整合能力是技术合作效果的重要影响因素.并且发现,整合能力是整合机制与技术合作效果之间的关键中介变量.     

Manufacturing feature-based cost management system: a case study in Brazil

Feature costing is a topic of recent discussion related to cost management systems (CMSs) aimed at understanding how product features influence production process costs. It raises as a key issue in mass customisation environments where a single product model can present hundreds of menu options. In this study, we explore the concept of feature costing beyond the use of activity-based costing (ABC). We propose a CMS based on features and common elements as costing objects instead of products. In our model, we use the unit of production effort method to organise the direct manufacturing costs, ABC method to address the indirect cost and the standard methods to compute raw materials costs. We illustrate the method in the production of bus seats in a Brazilian manufacturing company. This study gives different perspectives to the international academic community on the use of a different CMS used by many Brazilian companies.     

A Quantitative Theory of Unsecured Consumer Credit with Risk of Default

We study, theoretically and quantitatively, the general equilibrium of an economy in which households smooth consumption by means of both a riskless asset and unsecured loans with the option to default. The default option resembles a bankruptcy filing under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Competitive financial intermediaries offer a menu of loan sizes and interest rates wherein each loan makes zero profits. We prove the existence of a steady‐state equilibrium and characterize the circumstances under which a household defaults on its loans. We show that our model accounts for the main statistics regarding bankruptcy and unsecured credit while matching key macroeconomic aggregates, and the earnings and wealth distributions. We use this model to address the implications of a recent policy change that introduces a form of “means testing” for households contemplating a Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing. We find that this policy change yields large welfare gains.