We study a drop-shipping supply chain in which the retailer receives a customer's order and the supplier fills it. In such a chain, the supplier keeps inventory and bears inventory risks; the retailer focuses on marketing and customer acquisition, and forwards the orders to the supplier. The...

We study a single-period two-stage service-constrained supply chain with an information update. The buyer has two purchasing instances: before and after the forecast update. The procurement cost at the second stage is uncertain at the first stage. We determine the optimal ordering policy with...

We study a single-period two-stage service-constrained supply chain with an information update. The buyer has two procurement opportunities with the second one after observing a market signal, which updates the demand forecast. He also commits to a service level after observing the market...

Supply chains today routinely use third parties for many strategic activities, such as manufacturing, R&D, or software development. These activities often include relationship-specific investment on the part of the vendor, while final outcomes can be uncertain. Therefore, writing complete...

Supply chains today routinely use third parties for many strategic activities, such as manufacturing, R&D, or software development. These activities often include relationship-specific investment on the part of the vendor, while final outcomes can be uncertain. Therefore, writing complete...

Incomplete contracts may involve a hold-up problem, resulting in inefficient levels of investment. In this paper, we model the phenomenon as a sequential move game with asymmetric information regarding quality. Absence behavioral considerations, the unique Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium implies...

This paper examines open source software development in a competitive environment. The quality of open source software improves over time based upon contributions by firms and users. A firm's decision to contribute is interesting because it also augments competitors' software quality in future...

A commonly observed two-stage pricing strategy for a custom-made product involves a prepurchase entry fee for a potential consumer and a purchase price if he decides to buy the product. We solve and compare two settings: In the first, the firm does not commit in advance to the second-stage price...

The open source paradigm is often defined as a collaborative effort, implying that firms and consumers come together in a non-competitive climate. We show here that open source development can arise from a competitive climate. Under competition, we find that open source is the surplus maximizing...

Firms have the choice of developing software as either open source or closed source. The open-source approach to software development has been advocated as a new and better method for developing high quality software than the traditional closed-source approach. In open source, volunteer...