Representative Agent Pricing of Financial Assets Based on L��vy Processes with Normal Inverse Gaussian Marginals

The aim of the paper is to test the assumption of normal inverse Gaussian returns from speculative investments. We construct an asset pricing model where price processes are pure jump processes having associated returns with marginal distributions of this particular type. The resulting model is not complete, and we employ a partial equilibrium framework with a representative agent. The model is confronted with some stylized facts, like the equity premium puzzle, and the results seem promising.     

Optimizing maintenance service contracts under imperfect maintenance and a finite time horizon

When a company decides to outsource a service, the most important reasons for doing so usually are to focus on core business, to be able to access high‐quality services at lower costs, or to benefit from risk sharing. However, service contracts typically follow a structure whereby both owner and contractor attempt to maximize expected profits in a noncoordinated way. Previous research has considered supply chain coordination by means of contracts but is based on unrealistic assumptions such as perfect maintenance and infinite time‐span contracts. In this work, these limitations are overcome by defining the supply chain through a preventive maintenance strategy that maximizes the total expected profit for both parties in a finite time‐span contract. This paper presents a model to establish such conditions when maintenance is imperfect, and the contract duration is fixed through a number of preventive maintenance actions along a significant part of the asset life cycle under consideration. This formulation leads to a win–win coordination under a set of restrictions that can be evaluated a priori. The proposed contract conditions motivate stakeholders to continually improve their maintenance services to reach channel coordination in which both parties obtain higher rewards. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

存在价格差异的闭环供应链定价策略及契约协调

以零售商回收模式为对象,采用博弈论方法,研究再制造产品与新产品存在销售价格差异以及废旧产品存在回收价格差异时闭环供应链的定价策略及契约协调问题。对闭环供应链系统在分散决策和集中决策下的定价模型进行了分析,得到了系统各成员的最优定价策略和利润,发现分散决策会造成系统效率的损失。为此提出一种改进的特许经营费用契约对闭环供应链进行协调,使得闭环供应链系统不仅消除了"双重边际化"的问题,而且实现了完美协调。算例分析验证了定价策略及契约协调机制的有效性。     

Pricing of long dated equity-linked life insurance contracts

This article adopts an approach to pricing of equity-linked life insurance contracts, which only requires the existence of the numéraire portfolio. An equity-linked life insurance contract is equivalent to a sum of the guaranteed amount and the value of an option on the equity index with some mortality risk attached. The numéraire portfolio equals the growth optimal portfolio and is used as numéraire or benchmark, where the real-world probability measure is taken as pricing measure. To obtain tractable solutions the short rate is modelled as a quadratic form of some Gaussian factor processes. Furthermore, the dynamics of the mortality rate is modelled as a threshold life table. The dynamics of the discounted equity market index or benchmark is modelled by a time transformed squared Bessel process. The equity-linked life insurance contracts are evaluated analytically.     

供应链契约机制选择研究

基于供应链上下游的定价决策，本文分析了存在单个供应商、多个有差异的伯川德竞争零售商的确定性需求环境下，可供供应商选择的次优关税非协调定价机制以及数量折扣关税、完美协调关税两种协调定价机制特征。并通过算例研究．得出供应商在不同情况下如何作出机制选择。     

Future pricing through homogeneous semi‐Markov processes

An Erratum for this article has been published in Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry 2005; (in press) This paper presents a future pricing model based on the discrete time homogeneous semi‐Markov process (DTHSMP). The model is adapted to the real data of the Italian primary future stock index. After showing the pricing model, the DTHSMP solution is given. The solution of the semi‐Markov process gives, for each period of the considered horizon time, and for each starting state, the probability distribution of the future price. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

一个可以揭示经理人私人信息的信息甄别模型

首先,分析了经理人隐匿信息的原因,其次,基于机制设计理论与显示原理建立了一个能够显示经理人私人信息的信息甄别模型,再次,运用优化分析工具在委托代理模型框架下给出了模型的最优解,最后,我们分析了最优报酬契约的性质.     

A Two Stage Search Heuristic for Scheduling Payments in Projects

When the Net Present Value (NPV) of a project is used as a measure of its financial performance, effective management of cash flows over the duration of the project is critical for improved profitability. Progress payments are a major component of project cash flows. In many project environments, the contractor can negotiate payment terms. Payments are typically tied to completion of project activities and therefore have significant impact on the schedule of activities and the timing of the payments. In this paper, we consider the problem of simultaneously determining the amount, timing and location of progress payments in projects to maximize NPV. Due to the combinatorial nature of the problem, heuristics are a practical approach to solving the problem. We propose a two-stage heuristic where simulated annealing is used in the first stage to determine a set of payments. In the second stage, activities are rescheduled to improve project NPV. We compare the performance of this general purpose heuristic with other problem-dependent heuristics from the literature. Our results indicate that the simulated annealing heuristic significantly outperforms the parameter-based heuristics. Although rescheduling in the second stage improves NPV, increases are relatively small in magnitude. While the specific parameters settings suggested by the simulated annealing heuristic in this study may have limited generalizability at this time due to the narrow range of problems tested, our analysis suggests that a pure simulated annealing approach is a very attractive alternative for obtaining good heuristic solutions to the complex problem of scheduling payments in projects.     

Coordination of cooperative cost-reduction efforts in a supply chain partnership

We study cooperative cost reduction in a decentralized supply chain with a single manufacturer and multiple suppliers. The manufacturer assembles components that are procured from the suppliers to produce a final product. Both the manufacturer and the suppliers invest in reducing the unit production costs of the components. We see that neither of the two well-known conventional contracts, the wholesale price contract and the cost-plus pricing contract, generally coordinates the supply chain, i.e., under both of these types of contract, the individual optimal cost-reduction efforts of players deviate from the centralized system-optimal solution. However, this result is not surprising because these contracts encourage either only the manufacturer or only the suppliers alone to invest in cost reduction.