Supply Chain Contract Design: Impact of Bounded Rationality and Individual Heterogeneity

In this article, we model various forms of non‐optimizing behavior in a newsvendor setting, including biases such as recency, reinforcement, demand chasing, and anchoring, as well as unsystematic decision errors. We assume that a newsvendor may evaluate decisions by examining both past outcomes and future expected payoffs. Our model is motivated by laboratory observations under several types of supply chain contracts. Ordering decisions are found to follow multi‐modal distributions that are dependent on contract structures and incentives. We differ from previous research by using statistics to determine which behavioral factors are applicable to each decision maker. A great deal of heterogeneity was discovered, indicating the importance of calibrating a contract to the individual. Our analysis also shows that the profit performance and the effectiveness of co‐ordinating contracts can be affected by non‐optimizing behaviors significantly. We conclude that, in addition to the aggregate order quantities, the decision distributions should be considered in designing contracts.     

Intergenerational patterns of teenage fertility

One of the frequently cited consequences of teen childbearing is the repetition of early births across generations, which thereby perpetuates a cycle of poverty and disadvantage. We use data from the 1988 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), Cycle IV, to examine trends and determinants of the intergenerational teen fertility link for women who reached adolescence between the 1950s and the 1980s. We find that daughters of both white and black teen mothers face significantly higher risks of teen childbearing than daughters of older mothers. We also find, more generally, that patterns of teenage family formation (i.e., both marriage and childbearing behaviors) tend to be repeated intergenerationally. The results suggest that the intrafamily propensity for early childbearing is not inherited biologically, at least not through factors related to the timing of puberty. Rather, the intergenerational patterns appear to operate at least in part through the socioeconomic and family context in which children grow up.     

Broadening gender self-categorization development to include transgender identities

Research on gender in psychology has increasingly affirmed diversity in gender, with recognition of binary and nonbinary transgender experiences. However, gender has been presumed to be cisgender (congruent with sex) and binary (either male or female) in classical developmental theories. In response, this review engages in a critical analysis of classical gender development theory informed by findings about gender from research on transgender identities. Under analysis was the concept of gender self-categorization in classical theories of gender development including cognitive developmental theory, developmental gender schema theory, and social cognitive theory. Novel theoretical approaches are then outlined to situate recent advancements alongside classical theory. Conclusions are then drawn with brief recommendations for research methods that aim to include binary and nonbinary transgender participants. Drawing on the findings of this review it has been shown that gender self-categorization is often implicitly presumed to be cisgender identification. To overcome this bias, it is suggested that greater attention to specific gender self-categorization mechanisms are needed to open opportunities to include transgender experiences.     

Retrospective accounts of first exposure to minoritized sexual and gender identities

Although there has been considerable research about attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people, there has been little research into how people first come to be aware of minoritized sexual and gender minority (SGM) identities. This study sought to address this gap. A sample of sexual minority (n = 150) and heterosexual (n = 802) young adults (N = 952; M_age = 18.88 years, SD = 1.75; 949 were cisgender, three were transgender), primarily recruited from a large southern university, were asked retrospectively to recount their first exposure to or awareness of SGM identities. Responses between SGM and heterosexual participants were compared through a variety of analytical approaches, including analyzing themes about the source from which participants first recalled encountering these identities, and whether understanding about these identities came through a personal connection to someone with these identities. SGM participants reported encountering minoritized sexual identities a year earlier than did heterosexual participants, with both groups encountering these concepts in middle childhood, on average. SGM participants were more likely than heterosexual participants to report learning about minoritized gender identities from someone with a minoritized gender identity, while heterosexual participants more often reported learning about these identities from media or celebrities. Heterosexual (vs. SGM) participants were also more likely to imply that minoritized gender identities were adopted to be popular, rather than being authentic identities in themselves. Framed by developmental intergroup theory (DIT), we discuss implications of these findings, especially potential interrelationships with the development of prejudiced attitudes about SGM identities.     

Complexity as a Contract Design Factor: A Human‐to‐Human Experimental Study

Despite being theoretically suboptimal, simpler contracts (such as price‐only contracts and quantity discount contracts with limited number of price blocks) are commonly preferred in practice. Thus, exploring the tension between theory and practice regarding complexity and performance in contract design is especially relevant. Using human subject experiments, Kalkancı et al. (2011) showed that such simpler contracts perform effectively for a supplier interacting with a computerized buyer under asymmetric demand information. We use a similar set of experiments with the modification that a human supplier interacts with a human buyer. We show that human interactions strengthen the supplier's preference for simpler contracts. We find that suppliers have fairness concerns even when they interact with computerized buyers. These fairness concerns tend to be even stronger when suppliers interact with human buyers, particularly when the complexity of the contract is low. We also find that suppliers are more prone to random decision errors (i.e., bounded rationality) when interacting with human buyers. In the absence of social preferences, Kalkancı et al. identified reinforcement and bounded rationality as key biases that impact suppliers' decisions. In human‐to‐human experiments, we find evidence for social preference effects. However, these effects may be secondary to bounded rationality.