竞争环境下的产品定位-价格决策、渠道结构及福利研究

在竞争环境下,探讨议价能力对产品定位-价格决策、成员利润、用户以及社会整体的影响,采用稳定性分析法研究均衡状态下的渠道结构分布,并对基本模型进行拓展分析。研究表明:生产商议价能力越强,产品批发/零售价格和渠道成员利润越高,零售商在筛选产品生产商时更愿意选择知名品牌;采用自营模式将提高消费者剩余和社会福利;成本差异的扩大将提高社会福利,而用户偏好不确定性虽然有助于提升上下游成员利润,但会损害社会整体利益。     

碳排放约束下政府与企业的stackelberg决策分析

在碳排放约束额不能由政府单独决定的条件下,本文通过Stackelberg博弈模型分析了非集中决策系统中政府与企业对绿色技术的决策行为。对政府而言,在考虑以社会福利为目标的基础上引入了社会对环境的关注度,并分析了该因素对政府决策的影响。对企业而言,分析结果表明企业对绿色技术的选择并不随着约束值单调变化。当考虑技术成本对博弈双方决策的影响,发现企业对绿色技术的选择是由技术成本和产品经济效益对成本的补偿程度决定的。最后,综合考虑博弈双方的决策,本文讨论了政府能否通过适当的约束值来促使企业选择更好的绿色技术,并给出了建议。     

基于供应链视角的环境保护税社会分配效应研究

2018年实施的《环境保护税法》确立了排污征税的法律依据。环境保护税会增加成本并沿着供应链向下游逐级转移,从而改变社会分配格局。对此,基于供应链视角研究环境保护税的社会分配效应:首先,分析环境保护税沿着供应链的逐级转移,发现环境保护税会同时减少企业利润和消费者剩余;其次,比较企业利润和消费者剩余的减少程度,发现环境保护税会提高消费者的社会分配地位,也会提高零售企业的社会分配地位,但是会降低制造企业的社会分配地位;最后,比较环境保护税减少的企业利润和消费者剩余与形成的税收收入之间的相对大小,发现环境保护税会导致净社会福利损失,而且税负分担非常不均衡,制造企业承担最多,零售企业次之,消费者最少。     

双寡头垄断结构下的技术授权及社会福利分析——基于内生技术创新的视角

在具有水平差异且进行古诺竞争的双寡头结构中考虑技术拥有企业内生决定降低成本技术的创新程度,分析不同授权方式下技术拥有者利润、消费者剩余以及社会总福利的变化,并对不同授权方式下的技术创新程度进行比较。研究表明:技术拥有者通过双重收费、特许权收费方式总能实现利润增加,且双重收费方式能带来最大利润,而固定收费方式可能降低其利润;固定收费方式下消费者剩余、社会总福利高于双重收费,更高于特许权收费方式;技术创新程度与技术授权方式以及产品替代程度有关,且无论产品的替代程度如何,双重收费方式下的技术创新程度达到最大。     

Bargaining in endogenous trading networks

We study a model in which heterogeneous agents first form a trading network where linking costs are positive but infinitesimally small. Then, a seller and a buyer are randomly selected among the agents to bargain through a chain of intermediaries. We determine both the trading path and the allocation of the surplus among the seller, the buyer and the intermediaries at equilibrium. We show that, under the initiator bargaining protocol, a trading network is pairwise stable if it is a core–periphery network where the core consists of all impatient agents who are linked to each other and the periphery consists of all patient agents who have a single link towards an impatient agent. Once agents do not know the impatience of other agents, each bilateral bargaining session may involve delay. Then, core–periphery networks may not be pairwise stable because agents may prefer to add links for reducing the length of trading paths and so avoiding costly delays in reaching a global agreement.     

Numerical solutions to coupled-constraint (or generalised Nash) equilibrium problems

This paper is about games where the agents face constraints in the combined strategy space (unlike in standard games where the action sets are defined separately for each player) and about computational methods for solutions to such games. The motivation examples for such games include electricity generation problems with transmission capacity constraints, environmental management to control pollution and internet switching to comply to buffers of bounded capacity. In each such problem a regulator may aim at compliance to standards or quotas through taxes or charges. The relevant solution concept for these games has been known under several names like generalised Nash equilibrium, coupled constraint equilibrium and more. Existing numerical methods converging to such an equilibrium will be explained. Application examples of use of NIRA, which is a suite of Matlab routines that implement one of the methods, will be provided.      

低碳经济下政企博弈与政府补贴策略研究

在低碳经济的背景下,研究了政府补贴策略对政企博弈关系及企业决策行为的影响。通过引入两阶段动态博弈的方法,深入分析了不同政府补贴模式对需求量、产品价格、制造商的收益、消费者剩余以及社会福利所产生的影响。研究表明,价格对需求的影响系数以及政府补贴消费者对需求的影响系数等因素会影响政府补贴策略的选择,并得出了不同政府补贴策略下消费者剩余、制造商收益以及社会福利与单位产品补贴额的关系,本文为政府科学制定补贴政策以及在政府补贴背景下制造商和消费者应采取何种应对策略提供一定的决策支持。     

Sobre la necesidad de controlar el error de discretización de elementos finitos en optimización de forma estructural con algoritmos evolutivos

This work analyzes the influence of the discretization error contained in the Finite Element (FE) analyses of each design configuration proposed by the structural shape optimization algorithms over the behavior of the algorithm. The paper clearly shows that if FE analyses are not accurate enough, the final solution provided by the optimization algorithm will neither be optimal nor satisfy the constraints. The need for the use of adaptive FE analysis techniques in shape optimum design will be shown. The paper proposes the combination of two strategies to reduce the computational cost related to the use of mesh adaptivity in evolutionary optimization algorithms: (a) the use of the algorithm described by Bugeda et al. [1] which reduces the computational cost associated to the adaptive FE analysis of each geometrical configuration and, (b) the successive increase of the required accuracy of the FE analyses in order to obtain a considerable reduction of the computational cost in the early stages of the optimization process.     

Optimal production in a competitive market under yield uncertainty

Motivated by the U.S. influenza vaccine market, we study the impact of random yield and production capacity on the number of firms, total supply, consumer surplus and social welfare in a market with identical suppliers. We formulate a two-stage game with endogenous entry, where each entering firm aims to maximize its profit under yield uncertainty subject to a production capacity constraint. We show that if firms produce full capacity in the equilibrium, then there are fewer firms in the equilibrium compared to the social optimum even for small levels of yield uncertainty. Furthermore, we prove that if firms do not produce full capacity in the equilibrium, they will not produce full capacity in the social optimum.     

奖惩机制下零售商信息分享对闭环供应链的影响研究

研究奖惩机制下零售商的信息分享策略以及对闭环供应链的影响,建立了由制造商和零售商以及消费者组成的闭环供应链,其中制造商负责回收废旧产品并进行再制造。分别研究了集中式决策的情形和分散式决策下零售商信息分享和不分享的情形。研究发现,若政府在社会总福利目标中不考虑奖惩成本且回收难度较小时,零售商信息分享使社会总福利提高,反之,导致社会总福利降低;零售商信息分享总会使消费者剩余的期望值降低,但能够提高废旧产品的回收率。最后,针对零售商信息分享引起社会福利提高的情况设计了回收责任分担契约激励零售商分享信息。关键词:信息分享;奖惩机制;闭环供应链;社会福利;消费者剩余     

Intrafirm trade, arm’s-length transfer pricing rule, and coordination failure

This paper demonstrates that uniform imposition of the arm’s-length principle on transfer pricing leads to coordination failure among countries in terms of economic welfare if the countries trade products in the form of intrafirm transactions by multinational firms (MNFs). To highlight this implication, we first show that imposition of the arm’s-length principle on an MNF induces it to transfer a product among subordinate divisions at marginal cost, i.e., the competitive price, which is consistent with the purpose of the principle. Nonetheless, if regulators in each country impose the principle on MNFs, all of the following economic welfare measures decrease compared with the situation where the principle is not imposed: (1) consumer welfare in each of the trading countries, (2) profit of each MNF, and thus (3) total world economic welfare. This result indicates that it is possible that enforcement of the principle has no positive effect at all in the world because economic welfare of all economic agents deteriorates when the principle is imposed. A numerical analysis demonstrates that this possibility arises in a broad range of circumstances, even including the situation where a giant economic world power and a small underdeveloped country mutually trade products. In these circumstances, an agreement among trading countries that no country imposes the arm’s-length principle may encourage Pareto improvement of the world economy.     

Enforcing minimum run length in the cutting stock problem

Deckling, cutting stock or trim loss problems arise when small units are to be fitted into large ones. One aims to reduce stock usage and setups, then favors long runs, surplus over waste, similar loss per pattern and prompt delivery. One may also want to enforce exact solutions, with zero tolerance for surplus, or those with a narrow limit on pattern loss.Among secondary objectives, setups affect run length: on the average, fewer setups mean longer runs. Yet this relation is erratic. As setups decrease, some runs become longer, but others may stay as short as they are or become even shorter. We first show that this is so.We then examine the feasibility and the cost of making the shortest run longer in one-dimensional deckling problems. We show that conditional constraints do not formally enforce long runs, yet help to prove that they add at least one stock unit to an otherwise optimal plan. In turn, a relaxed stock constraint may improve runs, setups and surplus.     

Nash equilibria in optimal reinsurance bargaining

We introduce a strategic behavior in reinsurance bilateral transactions, where agents choose the risk preferences they will appear to have in the transaction. Within a wide class of risk measures, we identify agents’ strategic choices to a range of risk aversion coefficients. It is shown that at the strictly beneficial Nash equilibria, agents appear homogeneous with respect to their risk preferences. While the game does not cause any loss of total welfare gain, its allocation between agents is heavily affected by the agents’ strategic behavior. This allocation is reflected in the reinsurance premium, while the insurance indemnity remains the same in all strictly beneficial Nash equilibria. Furthermore, the effect of agents’ bargaining power vanishes through the game procedure and the agent who gets more welfare gain is the one who has an advantage in choosing the common risk aversion at the equilibrium.     

Optimal control of the insurance company with proportional reinsurance policy under solvency constraints

This paper considers the optimal control problem of the insurance company with proportional reinsurance policy under solvency constraints. The management of the company controls the reinsurance rate and dividends payout processes to maximize the expected present value of the dividend until the time of bankruptcy. This is a mixed singular-regular control problem. However, the optimal dividend payout barrier may be too low to be acceptable. The company may be prohibited to pay dividend according to external reasons because this low dividend payout barrier will result in bankruptcy soon. Therefore, some constraints on the insurance company’s dividend policy will be imposed. One reasonable and normal constraint is that if $b$ is the minimum dividend barrier, then the bankrupt probability should not be larger than some predetermined $\epsilon$ within the time horizon $T$. This paper is to work out the optimal control policy of the insurance company under the solvency constraints.     

On optimal partitions,individual values and cooperative games: Does a wiser agent always produce a higher value?

We consider an optimal partition of resources (e.g. consumers) between several agents, given utility functions (“wisdoms”) for the agents and their capacities. This problem is a variant of optimal transport (Monge–Kantorovich) between two measure spaces where one of the measures is discrete (capacities) and the costs of transport are the wisdoms of the agents. We concentrate on the individual value for each agent under optimal partition and show that, counter-intuitively, this value may decrease if the agent’s wisdom is increased. Sufficient and necessary conditions for the monotonicity with respect to the wisdom functions of the individual values will be given, independently of the other agents. The sharpness of these conditions is also discussed. Motivated by the above we define a cooperative game based on optimal partition and investigate conditions for stability of the grand coalition.     

Repeated congestion games with bounded rationality

We consider a repeated congestion game with imperfect monitoring. At each stage, each player chooses to use some facilities and pays a cost that increases with the congestion. Two versions of the model are examined: a public monitoring setting where agents observe the cost of each available facility, and a private monitoring one where players observe only the cost of the facilities they use. A partial folk theorem holds: a Pareto-optimal outcome may result from selfish behavior and be sustained by a belief-free equilibrium of the repeated game. We prove this result assuming that players use strategies of bounded complexity and we estimate the strategic complexity needed to achieve efficiency. It is shown that, under some conditions on the number of players and the structure of the game, this complexity is very small even under private monitoring. The case of network routing games is examined in detail.     

An active-set strategy in an interior point method for linear programming

We will present a potential reduction method for linear programming where only the constraints with relatively small dual slacks—termed active constraints—will be taken into account to form the ellipsoid constraint at each iteration of the process. The algorithm converges to the optimal feasible solution in O( L) iterations with the same polynomial bound as in the full constraints case, wheren is the number of variables andL is the data length. If a small portion of the constraints is active near the optimal solution, the computational cost to find the next direction of movement in one iteration may be considerably reduced by the proposed strategy.This research was partially done in June 1990 while the author was visiting the Department of Mathematics, University of Pisa.     

A note on Boiteux’ surplus function and dual Pareto efficiency

The purpose of this note is to study first a notion of a surplus function that originates in the work of [Boiteux, M., 1951. Le Revenu Distribuable et les Pertes Économiques. Econometrica 112–133] and to rely upon this notion to study dual Pareto efficiency in an exchange economy. This function, which we call the Boiteux’ surplus function, measures how many units of income an individual must be given to move from a reference utility level, to another utility level. We prove several properties of the Boiteux’ surplus function, and study in particular its links with the expenditure and the indirect utility functions. With regard to dual Pareto efficiency and the Boiteux’ surplus function our results are as follows. A feasible reference price–income pair is dual Pareto efficient if and only if it zero-maximizes the sum of individual Boiteux’ surplus functions among all feasible price–income pairs. We use these results to give a new proof (for the case of an exchange economy with positive prices) of the characterization by Luenberger of dual Pareto optima.     

Open versus closed loop capacity equilibria in electricity markets under perfect and oligopolistic competition

We consider two game-theoretic models of the generation capacity expansion problem in liberalized electricity markets. The first is an open loop equilibrium model, where generation companies simultaneously choose capacities and quantities to maximize their individual profit. The second is a closed loop model, in which companies first choose capacities maximizing their profit anticipating the market equilibrium outcomes in the second stage. The latter problem is an equilibrium problem with equilibrium constraints. In both models, the intensity of competition among producers in the energy market is frequently represented using conjectural variations. Considering one load period, we show that for any choice of conjectural variations ranging from perfect competition to Cournot, the closed loop equilibrium coincides with the Cournot open loop equilibrium, thereby obtaining a ‘Kreps and Scheinkman’-like result and extending it to arbitrary strategic behavior. When expanding the model framework to multiple load periods, the closed loop equilibria for different conjectural variations can diverge from each other and from open loop equilibria. We also present and analyze alternative conjectured price response models with switching conjectures. Surprisingly, the rank ordering of the closed loop equilibria in terms of consumer surplus and market efficiency (as measured by total social welfare) is ambiguous. Thus, regulatory approaches that force marginal cost-based bidding in spot markets may diminish market efficiency and consumer welfare by dampening incentives for investment. We also show that the closed loop capacity yielded by a conjectured price response second stage competition can be less or equal to the closed loop Cournot capacity, and that the former capacity cannot exceed the latter when there are symmetric agents and two load periods.     

Multi-criteria modelling of irrigation water market at basin level: A Spanish case study

This paper develops a multi-criteria methodology to simulate irrigation water markets at basin level. For this purpose it is assumed that irrigators try to optimise personal multi-attribute utility functions via their productive decision making process (crop mix), subject to a set of constraints based upon the structural features of their farms. In this sense, farmers with homogeneous behaviour regarding water use have been grouped, such groups being established as “types” to be considered in the whole water market simulation model. This model calculates the market equilibrium through a solution that maximises aggregate welfare, which is quantified as the sum of the multi-attribute utilities reached by each of the participating agents. This methodology has been empirically applied for the Duero Basin (Northern Spain), finding that the implementation of this economic institution would increase economic efficiency and agricultural labour demand, particularly during droughts.