Recent Developments in Dynamic Pricing Research: Multiple Products,Competition, and Limited Demand Information

Dynamic pricing enables a firm to increase revenue by better matching supply with demand, responding to shifting demand patterns, and achieving customer segmentation. In the last 20 years, numerous success stories of dynamic pricing applications have motivated a rapidly growing research interest in a variety of dynamic pricing problems in the academic literature. A large class of problems that arise in various revenue management applications involve selling a given amount of inventory over a finite time horizon without inventory replenishment. In this study, we identify most recent trends in dynamic pricing research involving such problems. We review existing research on three new classes of problems that have attracted a rapidly growing interest in the last several years, namely, problems with multiple products, problems with competition, and problems with limited demand information. We also identify a number of possible directions for future research.     

Mechanisms to Induce Buyer Forecasting: Do Suppliers Always Benefit from Better Forecasting?

In this study, we consider a supplier's contract offerings to a buyer who may obtain improved forecasts for her demand over time. We investigate how the supplier can take advantage of the buyer's better forecasts and what kind of contracts he should offer to the buyer in order to maximize his profits. We model a natural forecast evolution where the buyer can obtain a more accurate forecast closer to the selling season. We assume there is information asymmetry between the buyer and the supplier at all times in that the buyer understands her demand better than the supplier. Three types of contracts that the supplier can offer are considered: (1) one where a contract is offered before the buyer has a chance to obtain improved forecasts, (2) one where a contract is offered after the buyer has obtained improved forecasts, and (3) a contingent (dynamic) contract which offers an initial contract to the buyer before she obtains improved forecasts, followed by a later contract (contingent on the initial contract) offered after improved forecasts have been obtained. We consider two scenarios: (1) where the supplier is certain that the buyer can obtain more accurate forecasts over time, and (2) where the supplier is uncertain about the buyer's forecasting capability (or forecasting cost). In the first scenario, we show that among the three types of contracts, the contingent contract is always the most profitable for the supplier. Furthermore, using the contingent contract, the supplier always benefits from higher accuracy of the buyer's demand forecasts. In the second scenario, we explicitly model the supplier's level of certainty about the buyer's capability of obtaining better forecasts, and explore how the supplier can design contracts to induce the buyer to obtain better forecasts when she is capable.     

Economic and Environmental Assessment of Remanufacturing Strategies for Product + Service Firms

This article provides a data‐driven assessment of economic and environmental aspects of remanufacturing for product + service firms. A critical component of such an assessment is the issue of demand cannibalization. We therefore present an analytical model and a behavioral study which together incorporate demand cannibalization from multiple customer segments across the firm's product line. We then perform a series of numerical simulations with realistic problem parameters obtained from both the literature and discussions with industry executives. Our findings show that remanufacturing frequently aligns firms' economic and environmental goals by increasing profits and decreasing the total environmental impact. We show that in some cases, an introduction of a remanufactured product leads to no changes in the new products' prices (positioning within the product line), implying a positive demand cannibalization and a decrease in the environmental impact; this provides support for a heuristic approach commonly used in practice. Yet in other cases, the firm can increase profits by decreasing the new product's prices and increasing sales—a negative effective cannibalization. With negative cannibalization the firm's total environmental impact often increases due to the growth in new production. However, we illustrate that this growth is nearly always sustainable, as the relative environmental impacts per unit and per dollar rarely increase.     

Operational Hedging and Diversification under Correlated Supply and Demand Uncertainty

When facing supply uncertainty caused by exogenous factors such as adverse weather conditions, firms diversify their supply sources following the wisdom of “not holding all eggs in one basket.” We study a firm that decides on investment and production levels of two unreliable but substitutable resources. Applying real options thinking, production decisions account for actual supply capabilities, whereas investment decisions are made in advance. To model triangular supply and demand correlations, we adapt the concepts of random capacity and stochastic proportional yield while using concordant ordered random variables. Optimal profit decreases monotonically in supply correlation and increases monotonically in supply–demand correlation. Optimal resource selection, however, depends on the trivariate interplay of supply and demand and responds non‐monotonically to changing correlations. Moreover, supply hedges (i.e., excess capacity at alternative sources) can be optimal even if supply resources are perfectly positively correlated. To accommodate changing degrees of correlation, the firm adjusts the lower margin capacities under random capacity; but under stochastic proportional production capability, it uses either low‐ or high‐margin capacities to create tailored “scale hedges” (i.e., excess capacity at one source which can partially substitute for diversification).     

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.     

公司治理与企业价值的实证研究

本文试图构建一个能够恰当反映和评价中国企业公司治理水平的CGI指标体系及企业价值计量模型,并运用回归分析,检验中国企业公司治理与其价值的相关性。研究结论表明公司治理水平对企业短期绩效的影响相比于对反映企业长期绩效的企业价值的影响更为显著。     

构建网状式的利益表达渠道

有序和有效的利益表达渠道是建设和谐社会的重要条件,是减少社会矛盾冲突的一项基础性工作。我国现有的利益表达渠道尚存在信息传递不畅、表达成本高等问题,建立网状式的利益表达渠道是解决这些问题的应对之策。     

农民工对廉租房需求的实证研究——以南京市为例

在工业化和城市化快速发展的背景下,农民工己成为一个不容忽视、规模巨大的特殊群体,他们在城市里的住房问题日趋突出,已成为影响社会稳定和发展的重要因素。以问卷形式获取相关数据,采用Logistic模型,分析了南京市农民工廉租房需求度的重要影响因素：家庭人口数、月平均收入、年龄、受教育水平、婚姻状况等。主要结论：家庭人口数越多,月收入越高的农民工对廉租房的需求度更强烈;农民工对廉租房的需求度与农民工的婚姻状况、受教育程度存在相反的关系。     

“所”字词组的结构类型

通过分析＂所＂字词组的结构类型,总结得出＂所＂字词组应包括＂所＋动＂、＂主（之）＋所＋谓（动）＂、＂宾（之）＋所＋动＂、＂状（之）＋所＋动＂四种结构样式。四种结构中,＂所＂字皆用于动词或动词词组前;皆具有将与之结合的词或词组变成自己逻辑定语的功能,或具有将后面的名词或代词变成自己结构定语的作用;由此形成的结构皆相当于一个名词使用。     

农业标准化政府补贴行为的博弈分析析

农业标准化能提高农产品质量,同时因其对技术要求提高使成本增加,致使农户和企业缺乏农业标准化动力。采用供求模型和纳什均衡模型对农业标准化过程中利益主体（政府、企业、农户）的行为关系进行分析,结果表明,农业标准化生产对农民收入的影响取决于其带给农民的利润情况;农户、企业和政府三方面主体要实现纳什均衡,作为理性行为人的政府必须给予标准化生产的农户和企业补贴。基于此,提出明确财政补贴实施机制、保证充分的补贴资金来源、加强技术创新、提高农户标准化意识等政策建议。