Contract type and decision right of sales promotion in supply chain management with a capital constrained retailer

From the practices of Chinese consumer electronics market, we find there are two key issues in supply chain management: The first issue is the contract type of either wholesale price contracts or consignment contracts with revenue sharing, and the second issue is the decision right of sales promotion (such as advertising, on-site shopping assistance, rebates, and post-sales service) owned by either manufacturers or retailers. We model a supply chain with one manufacturer and one retailer who has limited capital and faces deterministic demand depending on retail price and sales promotion. The two issues interact with each other. We show that only the combination (called as chain business mode) of a consignment contract with the manufacturer’s right of sales promotion or a wholesale price contract with the retailer’s right of sales promotion is better for both members. Moreover, the latter chain business mode is realized only when the retailer has more power in the chain and has enough capital, otherwise the former one is realized. But which one is preferred by customers? We find that the former is preferred by customers who mainly enjoy low price, while the latter is preferred by those who enjoy high sales promotion level.     

Welfare Cost of Model Uncertainty in a Small Open Economy

This paper extends the canonical small open-economy real-business-cycle model, when considering model uncertainty. Domestic households have multiplier preferences, which leads them to take robust decisions in response to possible model misspecification for the economy’s aggregate productivity. Using perturbation methods, the paper extends the literature on real business cycle models by deriving a closed-form solution for the combined welfare effect of the two sources of uncertainty, namely risk and model uncertainty. While classical risk has an ambiguous effect on welfare, the addition of model uncertainty is unambiguously welfare-deteriorating. Hence, the overall effect of uncertainty on welfare is ambiguous, depending on consumers preferences and model parameters. The paper provides numerical results for the welfare effects of uncertainty measured by units of consumption equivalence. At moderate (high) levels of risk aversion, the effect of risk on household welfare is positive (negative). The addition of model uncertainty—for all levels of concern about model uncertainty and most risk aversion values—turns the overall effect of uncertainty on household welfare negative. It is important to remark that the analytical decomposition and combination of the effects of the two types of uncertainty considered here and the resulting ambiguous effect on overall welfare have not been derived in the previous literature on small open economies.     

上海市力学学会60年

上海市力学学会成立于1959年9月20日,到今年正好是一个甲子．60个春秋真实写照了上海市力学学会的建立、成长、发展与壮大的过程．60年来,在上海市科协的领导和中国力学学会的指导下,在各团体成员单位的大力支持下,上海市力学学会一代代力学工作者薪火相传、开拓耕耘,历届理事会及下属工作委员会和专业委员会团结奋进、不断创新,广大会员踊跃参与,为上海力学大力发展、力学人才精心培养、力学知识科学普及、力学服务国家发展战略和区域经济建设中做出了重要贡献,学会持续发展壮大．在庆祝力学学会成立六十周年之际,让我们共同抒怀上海力学六十年薪火相传、回顾近10年重要发展,展望上海力学新时代．     

The Physical Tourist¶Physics in Berlin: Walking tours in Charlottenburg and Dahlem and Excursions in the Vicinity of Berlin

A guided tour of significant sides pertaining to the history of physics is conducted around the area of the Technische Universit?t and the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in Berlin-Charlottenburg, of the Institutes of the former Kaiser Wilhelm Society in Berlin-Dahlem, as well as to some points of interest in the area of Potsdam.     

福利院人群微量元素第三年度观察与分析

微量元素检测及临床观察是在深圳市社会福利中心（福利院）人群中开展了三年的市级科研项目，通过了解这些人群体内6种微量元素含量，为微量元素与健康及相关性疾病的临床研究提供科学依据。与上年度比较，福利院人群体内的有益微量元素普遍有所下降，低铁、低钙，尤其以低钙明显，临床发病率、住院率有所上升，特别是肠道疾病明显升高。福利院需要继续改善生活环境，增加富含有益微量元素饮食；疾病要以预防为主，膳食合理，营养均衡，微量元素检查应列为常规项目。     

The Challenges of Machine Learning and Their Economic Implications

The deployment of machine learning models is expected to bring several benefits. Nevertheless, as a result of the complexity of the ecosystem in which models are generally trained and deployed, this technology also raises concerns regarding its (1) interpretability, (2) fairness, (3) safety, and (4) privacy. These issues can have substantial economic implications because they may hinder the development and mass adoption of machine learning. In light of this, the purpose of this paper was to determine, from a positive economics point of view, whether the free use of machine learning models maximizes aggregate social welfare or, alternatively, regulations are required. In cases in which restrictions should be enacted, policies are proposed. The adaptation of current tort and anti-discrimination laws is found to guarantee an optimal level of interpretability and fairness. Additionally, existing market solutions appear to incentivize machine learning operators to equip models with a degree of security and privacy that maximizes aggregate social welfare. These findings are expected to be valuable to inform the design of efficient public policies.     

Pre-commitment or post-payment: Which worsens a line-sitting firm’s revenue?

Recently, Cui et al. (2018) investigated the economics of line-sitting, where a customer could hire a line-sitter to wait for her, and the line-sitting fee is paid at the completion of service. Usually, it is believed that the line-sitting firm benefits in the pre-commitment payment method, in which the customer still pays a pre-specified amount of fee for service even if the actual waiting time is less than the pre-committed wait. By comparing two payment mechanisms, we find that, surprisingly, under the optimal line-sitting rate, the revenue of firm worsens under pre-commitment case, but a better customer welfare can be obtained.     

关于城市出租车规划的模型及应用

运用增长率法,建立指数增长的模型,结合规划期的人口规模,预测规划期的居民出行量和居民出行强度,以及乘坐出租车人口,随后利用出租车空载率为主要参数,建立数学模型并预测出租车的最佳数量.利用经济学分析方法,用埃奇沃思盒式图描述交易双方的福利变化,建立均衡时的价格竞争模型,寻求使司机和乘客达到帕累托改进的可能性.分别就油价调整前后的情况,找出调整起租基价和综合单位里程车价能使双方都满意的次优方案.进一步分析了起租基价和里程的合理性,提出了数据采集的建议和方案,并向市公用事业管理部门概括介绍.模型对确定其他类似准公共产品的供应量和定价也具有一定的借鉴意义.     

The Politics of Memory: Otto Hahn and the Third Reich

As President of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and its successor, the Max Planck Society, from 1946 until 1960, Otto Hahn (1879–1968) sought to portray science under the Third Reich as a purely intellectual endeavor untainted by National Socialism. I outline Hahn’s activities from 1933 into the postwar years, focusing on the contrast between his personal stance during the National Socialist period, when he distinguished himself as an upright non-Nazi, and his postwar attitude, which was characterized by suppression and denial of Germany’s recent past. Particular examples include Hahn’s efforts to help Jewish friends; his testimony for colleagues involved in denazification and on trial in Nuremberg; his postwar relationships with émigré colleagues, including Lise Meitner; and his misrepresentation of his wartime work in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry.