The coordination of supply chains by means of contracting mechanisms has been extensively explored theoretically but not tested empirically. We investigate the performance of three commonly studied supply chain contracting mechanisms: the wholesale price contract, the buyback contract, and the...

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...

Although optimal forms of supply chain contracts have been widely studied in the literature, it has also been observed that decision makers fail to make optimal decisions in these contract setups. In this research, we propose different approaches to improve the performance of supply chain...

In this laboratory study, we investigate the interactive behaviors that develop over a perceived long-term contractual relationship. Specifically, three types of contracts are examined under a two-echelon supply chain setting with stochastic demand: wholesale price contracts, buyback contracts...

This paper aims to find out the various types of effort levels in upstream and downstream supply chain. For this purpose, whole supply chain effort is divided into two major parts, viz., supplier effort level (upstream supply chain) and manufacturer effort level (downstream supply chain)....

This article investigates the role of option contracts in a supply chain when the demand curve is downward sloping. We consider call (put) options that provide the retailer with the right to reorder (return) goods at a fixed price. We show that the introduction of option contracts causes the...

The benefits of supply chain innovations such as quick response (QR) have been extensively investigated. This paper highlights a potentially damaging impact of QR on retailer effort. By lowering downstream inventories, QR may compromise retailer incentives to exert sales effort on a...

A manufacturer supplies a newsvendor product to a dominant retailer, who does not know the manufacturer's unit production cost k. The expected retail demand is a function of the unit retail price p. For this increasingly prevalent but rarely analyzed scenario, we compare the performance of...

Applying a real option approach, this paper examines how asymmetric information alters key variables of a firm’s supplier switching process, such as the timing of contracting (hurried versus delayed contracting), transfer payments, set-up, switching, and abandonment decisions. In a symmetric...

In this thesis, we analyze the effect that price postponement has on the performance and coordination of a two-stage supply chain facing consumer returns. In an extended news-vendor setting with a single product, a single manufacturer and a single retailer who faces stochastic and...