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.     

Optimal ordering and pricing policy for an inventory system with trial periods

It is a business practice that home shopping companies offer a free trial period for their products with a goal of increasing sales. Under this policy, if for any reason customers are not satisfied with the purchase, they can return the product for a refund within the trial period. To develop inventory strategies in such environment, home shopping companies should take the return phenomenon into account so as to increase their profit. This paper considers this phenomenon and develops a seasonal inventory model to deal with the problem. Two scenarios are analyzed. In the first scenario, demand is assumed to be linearly price-dependent while in the second one, it is assumed to be exponentially price-dependent. The purpose of this research is to maximize the total profit over a given planning period by determining the optimal ordering quantity and price. The analytical results demonstrate that the optimal ordering quantity and prices are obtained using closed-form formulas.     

具有定价和开机成本的生产-库存系统的最优(s,d,S)策略

考虑一个具有有限容量和开机成本的连续盘点生产-库存系统, 其控制策略为(s,d,S)策略. 未被满足的需求都会丢失. 当机器处于关闭状态时,库存产品可以两个不同的价格进行销售. 当机器处于开机状态时,库存只能以较高的价格进行销售. 研究了如何发现该系统下的最优(s,d,S)策略,并开发了用于计算最优控制参数的有效算法.     

Production planning and pricing policy in a make-to-stock system with uncertain demand subject to machine breakdowns

We consider a make-to-stock system served by an unreliable machine that produces one type of product, which is sold to customers at one of two possible prices depending on the inventory level at the time when a customer arrives (i.e., the decision point). The system manager must determine the production level and selling price at each decision point. We first show that the optimal production and pricing policy is a threshold control, which is characterized by three threshold parameters under both the long-run discounted profit and long-run average profit criteria. We then establish the structural relationships among the three threshold parameters that production is off when inventory is above the threshold, and that the optimal selling price should be low when inventory is above the threshold under the scenario where the machine is down or up. Finally we provide some numerical examples to illustrate the analytical results and gain additional insights.     

Single facility location on a network under mill and delivered pricing

^** E-mail: pelegrin{at}um.es Firms normally use either a mill price or a delivered pricepolicy, depending on market conditions (type of good, transportationway, customers location, costs, etc). In this paper, the problemof selecting the best location for an entering firm in competitionwith some pre-existing firms, under each price policy, is studiedon a network for the first time. With mill pricing, an equilibriumin price rarely exists and it is assumed that all competingfirms set a common mill price for all customers. With deliveredpricing, there exists a Nash equilibrium in price and it isassumed that the equilibrium price in each area is offered tothe customers in that area. In both cases, we consider thatcustomers buy from the cheapest facility and the same rulesare used for tie breaking in the lowest cost. While the profitmaximization problem for the entering firm always has optimalsolutions under mill pricing, this problem might not have anoptimal solution under delivered pricing. We show some discretizationresults and give procedures to find the full set of optimal,or -optimal, solutions to the problem under the two price policies.A comparison of results with the two price policies is givenby using an illustrative example.     

A comparison of different quantity discount pricing policies in a two-echelon channel with stochastic and asymmetric demand information

In this paper, we study quantity discount pricing policies in a channel of one manufacturer and one retailer. The paper assumes that the channel faces a stochastic price-sensitive demand but the retailer can privately observe the realization of an uncertain demand parameter. The problem is analyzed as a Stackelberg game in which the manufacturer declares quantity discount pricing schemes to the retailer and then the retailer follows by selecting the retail price and associated quantity. Proposed in the paper are four quantity-discount pricing policies: “regular quantity discount”; “fixed percentage discount”; “incremental volume discount” and “fixed marginal-profit-rate discount”. Optimal solutions are derived, and numerical examples are presented to illustrate the efficiency of each discount policy.     

An efficient and accurate lattice for pricing derivatives under a jump-diffusion process

Derivatives are popular financial instruments whose values depend on other more fundamental financial assets (called the underlying assets). As they play essential roles in financial markets, evaluating them efficiently and accurately is critical. Most derivatives have no simple valuation formulas; as a result, they must be priced by numerical methods such as lattice methods. In a lattice, the prices of the derivatives converge to theoretical values when the number of time steps increases. Unfortunately, the nonlinearity error introduced by the nonlinearity of the option value function may cause the pricing results to converge slowly or even oscillate significantly. The lognormal diffusion process, which has been widely used to model the underlying asset’s price dynamics, does not capture the empirical findings satisfactorily. Therefore, many alternative processes have been proposed, and a very popular one is the jump-diffusion process. This paper proposes an accurate and efficient lattice for the jump-diffusion process. Our lattice is accurate because its structure can suit the derivatives’ specifications so that the pricing results converge smoothly. To our knowledge, no other lattices for the jump-diffusion process have successfully solved the oscillation problem. In addition, the time complexity of our lattice is lower than those of existing lattice methods by at least half an order. Numerous numerical calculations confirm the superior performance of our lattice to existing methods in terms of accuracy, speed, and generality.     

Inventory,channel coordination and bargaining in a manufacturer-retailer system

Substantial research literature has been developed over the years on the subject of inventory. The more recent literature has examined the fundamental relationships between inventory control and price theory. A significant portion of this literature assumes the ultimate consumer demand as a constant and characterizes the relationship between a manufacturer and a retailer as a leader-follower problem. A primary assumption in these studies is that the manufacturer, as the leader, exerts almost complete control over the behavior of the retailer. However, in practice, the retailer does exert some control over the manufacturer. This paper develops a framework that integrates inventory control with constant demand and the economic relationship between consumer demand and retail price. Within this framework, the impact of order quantity, wholesale price and retail price on the behavior of both the manufacturer and the retailer is investigated. Furthermore, this paper explores the issues and conclusions that results from coordinating the relationship between the manufacturer and the retailer. Our analyses demonstrate that channel coordination can be achieved by utilizing well-known bargaining models. A numerical example is provided to illustrate our theoretical findings.     

基于在线评论的多个竞争制造商和零售商的产品定价策略

在线评论作为一种产品信息传播载体,越来越受到网上电商及消费者的重视,并在很大程度上影响消费者的购买决策。本文在多个竞争性制造商为在线零售商提供可替代性产品并通过零售商销售给网络消费者的电子商务环境下,研究在线评论信息如何影响网络消费者购买决策及在线零售商和制造商的定价策略。以neo-Hoteling模型为基础,构建了依赖零售渠道在线评论的消费者选择模型,并通过模型求解定量分析了二级供应链结构分散系统下在线评论对多个竞争性制造商及零售商最优决策的影响。得到当制造商基于评论制定最优定价策略时,在线评论对市场竞争强度没有影响,但决定潜在市场大小;各产品的均衡批发价及销售价按一定的比例随评论揭示的该产品与其他产品质量均值之差(正或负)增加或减少,评论信息通常会使制造商因好评而获利,由于评论增加了不同产品需求的不对称性,零售商因而具有更大的调价空间,往往通过提高(降低)占据有利(不利)评论的产品价格获得更高的利润。     

Dynamic inventory and pricing policy in a capacitated stochastic inventory system with fixed ordering cost

We study a dynamic inventory and pricing optimization problem in a periodic review inventory system with setup cost and finite ordering capacity in each period. We show that the optimal inventory control is characterized by an (s,s^′,p) policy in four regions of the starting inventory level.     

Quality investment and inspection policy in a supplier–manufacturer supply chain

This paper examines a serial supply chain that consists of one supplier and one manufacturer, each having imperfect production and inspection processes. Both the supplier and the manufacturer invest in quality improvement actions in their production processes to reduce defective items being produced. In addition to quality investment, the supplier engages in outbound inspection before sending the components to the manufacturer, and the manufacturer engages in inbound inspection, when receiving the components from the supplier, and outbound inspection, before sending final products to customers. We investigate the supplier’s and the manufacturer’s quality investment and inspection strategies in four noncooperative games with different degrees of information revealed. We study the effects of inspection-related information on both parties’ equilibrium strategies and profits, and further assess, at equilibrium, the rationality of the penalty on defective components.     

Two thresholds of a batch arrival queueing system under modified T vacation policy with startup and closedown

This paper studies the operating characteristics of the variant of an M^[x]/G/1 vacation queue with startup and closedown times. After all the customers are served in the system exhaustively, the server shuts down (deactivates) by a closedown time, and then takes at most J vacations of constant time length T repeatedly until at least one customer is found waiting in the queue upon returning from a vacation. If at least one customer is present in the system when the server returns from a vacation, then the server reactivates and requires a startup time before providing the service. On the other hand, if no customers arrive by the end of the J th vacation, the server remains dormant in the system until at least one customer arrives. We will call the vacation policy modified T vacation policy. We derive the steady‐state probability distribution of the system size and the queue waiting time. Other system characteristics are also investigated. The long‐run average cost function per unit time is developed to determine the suitable thresholds of T and J that yield a minimum cost. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Uniform regularity and vanishing viscosity limit for the chemotaxis‐Navier‐Stokes system in a 3D bounded domain

We investigate the uniform regularity and vanishing viscosity limit for the incompressible chemotaxis‐Navier‐Stokes system with Navier boundary condition for velocity field and Neumann boundary condition for cell density and chemical concentration in a 3D bounded domain. It is shown that there exists a unique strong solution of the incompressible chemotaxis‐Navier‐Stokes system in a finite time interval, which is independent of the viscosity coefficient. Moreover, this solution is uniformly bounded in a conormal Sobolev space, which allows us to take the vanishing viscosity limit to obtain the incompressible chemotaxis‐Euler system.     

A reliability system under different types of shock governed by a Markovian arrival process and maintenance policy K

A reliability system subject to shocks producing damage and failure is considered. The source of shocks producing failures is governed by a Markovian arrival process. All the shocks produce deterioration and some of them failures, which can be repairable or non-repairable. Repair times are governed by a phase-type distribution. The number of deteriorating shocks that the system can stand is fixed. After a fatal failure the system is replaced by another identical one. For this model the availability, the reliability, and the rate of occurrence of the different types of failures are calculated. It is shown that this model extends other previously published in the literature.     

Dynamical behavior for a class of predator–prey system with general functional response and discontinuous harvesting policy

In this paper, we introduce a class of predator–prey system with general functional response, whose harvesting policy is modeled by a discontinuous function. Based on the differential inclusions theory, topological degree theory in set‐valued analysis and generalized Lyapunov approach, we analyze the existence, uniqueness and global asymptotic stability of positive periodic solution. In particular, a series of useful criteria on existence, uniqueness and global asymptotic stability of the positive equilibrium point are established for the autonomous system corresponding to the non‐autonomous biological and mathematical model with a discontinuous right‐hand side. Moreover, some new sufficient conditions are provided to guarantee the global convergence in measure of harvesting solution and convergence in finite time of any positive solution for the autonomous discontinuous biological system. The obtained results, which improve and generalize previous works on dynamical behavior in the literature, are of interest for understanding and designing biological system with not only continuous or even Lipschitz continuous but also discontinuous harvesting function. Finally, we give three examples with numerical simulations to show the applicability and effectiveness of our main results. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.