基于Agent仿真的个体有限理性与众包绩效的关系研究

如何筛选有限理性参与者是企业实施众包的关键问题。通过引入个体有限理性,扩展了经典的NK模型,构建了模拟竞赛式众包问题解决过程的多主体仿真模型,研究了个体有限理性水平、个体有限理性系统化程度以及个体有限理性水平标准差对众包绩效的影响。仿真结果显示,个体有限理性水平对提高众包绩效有显著的正向影响,尤其是在任务复杂性较高的情况下;个体有限理性系统化程度和个体有限理性水平标准差对众包绩效也有正向影响,但依赖于个体有限理性水平。当企业有一个复杂性较高的任务时,如果追求所有方案的整体改善,企业需要招募有限理性水平较高的个体,并组成有限理性系统化程度较高且有限理性水平标准差较大的群体;如果追求少数优质方案,企业需要招募有限理性水平较高的个体,并组成有限理性系统化程度较低且有限理性水平标准差较大的群体。     

Efficient Coordination by Optimal Allocation of Decision Rights for Participants on Electronic Financial Services Markets

Information technology (IT) is enabling large companies and particularly banking firms to create new forms of organizations. Both globalization of markets and stronger regulation throughout the world puts pressure on banking firms to either spend more money coordinating business activities in the traditional hierarchical ways or to employ new forms of organizations enabled by (lower costs of) IT. When facing uncertain demand in multiple horizontal markets, resource allocation problems occur. Accordingly, the location of decision authority in a multilevel hierarchical organization has profound impact on the performance of the firm. The firm has to design its coordination structure, which determines who makes the resource allocation decisions. Considering the tradeoff between pooling effects in the case of centralized decision-making and better assessment of local markets in the case of decentralized decision-making, the decision problem where to locate decision rights to maximize total profits has to be solved. In this paper we investigate for both independent and dependent demands the total profits for each of the possible coordination mechanisms: centralized decision-making, decentralized decision-making, and intermediate-level decision-making. It turns out that—depending on the crucial parameters of the firm—decentralized decision-making or centralized decision-making may be optimal. But in many relevant cases the optimal location of decision rights is at an intermediate level of the hierarchy. We illustrate the findings by considering the banking firm coordinating equity capital allocation by granting alternative decision rights to their employees as participants on electronic financial markets. Finally we discuss the generality of the approach and its applicability in other areas such as inventory management.     

Strategic commitment to price to stimulate downstream innovation in a supply chain

It is generally in a firm’s interest for its supply chain partners to invest in innovations. To the extent that these innovations either reduce the partners’ variable costs or stimulate demand for the end product, they will tend to lead to higher levels of output for all of the firms in the chain. However, in response to the innovations of its partners, a firm may have an incentive to opportunistically increase its own prices. The possibility of such opportunistic behavior creates a hold-up problem that leads supply chain partners to underinvest in innovation. Clearly, this hold-up problem could be eliminated by a pre-commitment to price. However, by making an advance commitment to price, a firm sacrifices an important means of responding to demand uncertainty. In this paper we examine the trade-off that is faced when a firm’s channel partner has opportunities to invest in either cost reduction or quality improvement, i.e. demand enhancement. Should it commit to a price in order to encourage innovation, or should it remain flexible in order to respond to demand uncertainty. We discuss several simple wholesale pricing mechanisms with respect to this trade-off.     

New product introduction and capacity investment by incumbents: Effects of size on strategy

We analyze a duopoly where capacity-constrained firms offer an established product and have the option to offer an additional new and differentiated product. We show that the firm with the smaller capacity on the established market has a higher incentive to innovate and reaches a larger market share on the market for the new product. An increase in capacity of the larger firm can prevent its competitor from innovating, whereas an increase in capacity of the smaller firm cannot prevent innovation of its larger competitor. In equilibrium the firm with smaller capacity on the established market might outperform the larger firm with respect to total payoffs.     

Environmental considerations on the optimal product mix

Several types of regulations limit the amount of different emissions that a firm may create from its production processes. Depending on the emission, these regulations could include threshold values, penalties and taxes, and/or emission allowances that can be traded. However, many firms try to comply with these regulations without a systematic plan, often leading not only to emission violations and high penalties, but also to high costs. In this paper, we present two mathematical models that can be used by firms to determine their optimal product mix and production quantities in the presence of several different types of environmental constraints, in addition to typical production constraints. Both models are comprehensive and incorporate several diverse production and environmental issues. The first model, which assumes that each product has just one operating procedure, is a linear program while the second model, which assumes that the firm has the option of producing each product using more than one operating procedure, is a mixed integer linear program. The solutions of both models identify the products that the firm should produce along with their production quantities. These models can be used by firms to quickly analyze several “what if” scenarios such as the impact of changes in emission threshold values, emission taxes, trading allowances, and trading transaction costs.     

基于合作博弈的买方抗衡势力市场绩效与卖方工艺创新强度分析

设计了由一个上游企业和两个下游企业所构成的产业链纵向关系模型,建立了纵向一体化、纵向分离且下游企业均无买方抗衡势力、以及单个下游企业具有买方抗衡势力三种情况下上游企业的工艺创新强度计算模型,分析了下游企业存在买方抗衡势力时市场中均衡的批发价格、零售价格、企业利润以及社会福利的变化,给出了相应的结论,同时也说明了“加尔布雷斯假说”在本文的结构下没有得到验证。     

Dynamic strategic interaction between an innovating and a non-innovating incumbent

This paper analyzes the effects of product innovation on the firms’ investment behavior in a dynamic duopoly framework. A differential game setting is considered where initially two firms are active on a homogeneous product market. One of the firms has an option to introduce a new product that is horizontally and vertically differentiated from the established product. The resulting differential game has three states corresponding to three capital stocks: one for each firm to produce the established product, and one for the innovating firm to produce the new product. We numerically derive Markov perfect equilibria. One of the most remarkable results is that in most cases the non-innovating firm benefits when the other firm carries out the innovation option. The intuition is that, to increase demand for the innovative product, the innovative firm reduces capacity on the established market, which increases the price of the established product and thus the payoff of the non-innovating firm.     

商业模式创新对财务绩效的影响研究:基于新兴技术企业的实证

研究分析了商业模式创新对财务绩效的影响以及这种影响的环境条件。研究提出了6个理论假设,并采用来自151个新兴技术企业的样本进行了实证检验。研究发现效率型和新颖型商业模式创新都能促进财务绩效。市场不成熟和不正当竞争会加强效率型商业模式创新对财务绩效的促进作用,而不正当竞争会削弱新颖型商业模式创新对财务绩效的促进作用。     

医药产学研联盟创新决策、创新危机与利润分配

以我国医药行业产学研合作创新为现实背景,构建两家相互竞争的制药企业与学研机构的双边纳什议价模型,分析企业的创新价值和议价能力对联盟成员绩效的影响,探讨合作创新对药品价格、企业市场份额、经营绩效和社会福利的影响,研究制药企业创新战略的选择决策及创新对企业可能的危险。通过模型分析,得到如下结论:产学研合作创新能够提高社会总福利,但不一定提高制药企业的绩效和药品的价格;议价能力强的制药企业不一定总是获得高利润,企业最终的利润受到企业自身及竞争者的议价能力、创新价值的共同影响;虽然产品创新能够提高消费者的购买意愿,但盲目跟风创新可能会带来双输的结果。本研究对促进医药行业的产学研合作,提高产学研合作的有效性具有现实意义。     

Market selection decisions for inventory models with price-sensitive demand

In the majority of classical inventory theory literature, demand arises from exogenous sources upon which the firm has little or no control. In many practical contexts, however, aggregate demand is comprised of individual demands from a number of distinct customers or markets. This introduces new dimensions to supply chain planning problems involving the selection of markets or customers to include in the demand portfolio. We present a nonlinear, combinatorial optimization model to address planning decisions in both deterministic and stochastic settings, where a firm constructs a demand portfolio from a set of potential markets having price-sensitive demands. We first consider a pricing strategy that dictates a single price throughout all markets and provide an efficient algorithm for maximizing total profit. We also analyze the model under a market-specific pricing policy and describe its optimal solution. An extensive computational study characterizes the effects of key system parameters on the optimal value of expected profit, and provides some interesting insights on how a given market’s characteristics can affect optimal pricing decisions in other markets.     

Asymmetric Supply Function Equilibria with Forward Contracts

We consider markets in which firms offer supply functions, rather than a quantity or price alone: the most important examples are wholesale electricity markets. The equilibria in such markets can be hard to characterize. In many cases, whole families of supply function equilibria occur so there are difficulties in determining which equilibrium will be chosen. In this paper, we consider supply function equilibria, when firms hold forward contracts, which is common in electricity markets. Under the assumption that contract positions have been fixed in advance, we characterize the families of supply function equilibria in a duopoly. The existence of forward contracts implies a tightening of the conditions for an equilibrium, and a greater likelihood that no equilibrium solution exists. In the case of three firms, there can be at most one supply function equilibrium, provided that the lowest demand be small enough.     

对相关市场条件下贸易竞争的博弈机制及福利效应的研究

在古诺双头模型的框架内分析了市场风险和相关因素对贸易竞争均衡和福利水平的影响.与传统模型不同,假设各国市场具有潜在相关的随机需求,且出口企业具有风险规避的态度,并利用博弈模型研究了市场风险和相关因子对竞争力和成本优势形成的产出效应及定价行为的影响.推论表明国际市场的不确定性和相关性削弱了企业在完全信息条件下参与贸易竞争的动机,而各国的福利水平则取决于企业风险态度、市场风险和相关系数的特定组合.     

Modeling operational risk incorporating reputation risk: An integrated analysis for financial firms

It has been shown in the empirical literature that operational losses of financial firms can cause severe reputational losses, which, however, are typically not taken into account when modeling and assessing operational risk. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap by assessing the consequences of operational risk for a financial firm including reputational losses. Toward this end, we extend current operational risk models by incorporating reputation losses. We propose three different models for reputation risk: a simple deterministic approach, a stochastic model using distributional assumptions, and an extension of the second model by taking into account a firm’s ability to deal with reputation events. Our results emphasize that reputational losses can by far exceed the original operational loss and that neglecting reputational losses may lead to a severe underestimation of certain operational risk types and especially fraud events.     

Analyzing the potential of a firm: an operations research approach

An approach to analyzing the potential of a firm, which is understood as the firm's ability to provide goods or (and) services to be supplied to a marketplace under restrictions imposed by a business environment in which the firm functions, is proposed. The approach is based on using linear inequalities and, generally, mixed variables in modelling this ability for a broad spectrum of industrial, transportation, agricultural, and other types of firms and allows one to formulate problems of analyzing the potential of a firm as linear programming problems or mixed programming problems with linear constraints. This approach generalizes the one proposed by the author earlier for a more narrow class of models and allows one to effectively employ a widely available software for solving practical problems of the considered kind, especially for firms described by large scale models of mathematical programming.     

新成员的加入对供应商网络效率的影响分析

不断有企业进入或者退出供应商网络,网络中企业的效用和网络效率都会受到影响.本文把关系收益和竞争系数结合起来,构建了新的效用函数.并通过效用的比较分析,竞争系数对称时,新企业的加入会使网络效率增加的结论,并进一步给出了进入企业选择与中心企业或者与边缘企业建立关系所应满足的条件;而竞争系数不对称时,网络效率可能会降低.     

A Markov Model of Referral-Based Hiring and Workplace Segregation

I construct a Markov model of referral hiring to look at two issues: inequality between groups and workplace segregation. The model differs from most models of referral hiring in that it explicitly considers a firm structure where employment opportunities arise. The model suggests that referral hiring does not directly produce inequality between groups at the population level, even though firms have a bias toward hiring workers from the same group they already employ. The result highlights a difference between outcomes of referral hiring at the population and individual levels in that individual firm biases balance out when aggregated. However, referral hiring does produce segregation of groups across firms in a given industry, and the degree of segregation monotonically increases in the amount of referral hiring.     

A duopolistic spatial competition model with non-zero conjectural variation

Consider a two-stage non-cooperative Cournot game with location choice involving two firms. There aren spatially separated markets located at the vertices of a network. Each firm, first selects the location of a facility and then selects the quantities to supply to the markets in order to maximize its profit. Non-zero conjectural variation at the second stage is studied. Equilibrium in the quantities offered by each firm in the markets exists. Furthermore, when the demand in each market is sufficiently large, each firm chooses to locate its facility at the vertices. Partially financed by FEDER and Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología, grant BFM2002-04525-C02-01, and Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, grant UNI2004/12     

Supply chain performance assessment and supplier and component importance identification in a general competitive multitiered supply chain network model

In this paper, we develop a multitiered competitive supply chain network game theory model, which includes the supplier tier. The firms are differentiated by brands and can produce their own components, as reflected by their capacities, and/or obtain components from one or more suppliers, who also are capacitated. The firms compete in a Cournot–Nash fashion, whereas the suppliers compete a la Bertrand since firms are sensitive to prices. All decision-makers seek to maximize their profits with consumers reflecting their preferences through the demand price functions associated with the demand markets for the firms’ products. We construct supply chain network performance measures for the full supply chain and the individual firm levels that assess the efficiency of the supply chain or firm, respectively, and also allow for the identification and ranking of the importance of suppliers as well as the components of suppliers with respect to the full supply chain or individual firm. The framework is illustrated through a series of numerical supply chain network examples.     

A note on price and quality competition between asymmetric firms

This paper analyzes the impact of asymmetry between firms on the outcome of price and quality competition from a microeconomic viewpoint. Consumers purchase a product based on not only its price but also its quality level; therefore, two firms compete in determining their prices and quality levels to maximize their profits. The asymmetry arises from the difference in consumers’ loyalty to each firm; that asymmetry then determines a character of differentiation between firms. Our purpose is to show how asymmetry influences competition under varying consumers’ price- and quality-sensitivity. In doing so, we extend earlier work in the area of price and quality competition. We show that in both the moderately quality-sensitive and price-sensitive markets, higher consumers’ sensitivity as well as lower consumers’ loyalty to any firm leads to intense competition, resulting in a decrease of both firms’ equilibrium profits. On the other hand, in highly quality-sensitive market, asymmetry compels the smaller firm to change its competitive strategy. In general, this is more beneficial to the larger firm, as the smaller firm’s profit tends to decline. In the worst case, the smaller firm is driven out of business under equilibrium.     

Prediction of bond ratings using statistical and neural networks techniques

Quantitative models have been developed to predict bond ratings of firms in the Indian manufacturing sector, using financial leverage, profitability, asset management ability, stability and market sensitivity of the firm, which totally involved 16 variables. These 16 independent variables are first reduced to seven orthogonal variables using principal component analysis. Then these variables are used to build three types of models, namely Multiple Discriminant Analysis (MDA), Multinomial Logistic Regression (MLR) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). Based on both in-sample classification and out-sample validation it is found that both MLR and ANN models are superior to MDA, with little difference in performance between themselves. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)