Media and industry reports maintain that the U.S. long-distance trucking market is experiencing a shortage of drivers, and that the shortage is expected to persist well into the future. At the same time, reports of supply-chain disruption throughout U.S. industry focus on a lack of...

Many consumer demand situations exist in which individuals have a preference for variety that leads to multiple products being chosen. For example, clothing, food, books, and music are regularly purchased several items at a time. Prior to a purchase decision consumers face product uncertainty...

Bargaining between consumer-product manufacturers and their retail customers is at least nominally constrained by the prohibitions on price discrimination of the Robinson-Patman Act (RPA) of 1936. However, because the RPA is generally regarded as being inconsistent with the anti-trust principle...

Problem Definition: Scan Based Trading (SBT) represents a type of replenishment system in which the supplier retains title until the product is scanned through checkout at the retail store by the consumer. Although SBT carries potential bene ts for both parties in the supplier-retailer dyad, it...

Switching costs are generally regarded as anti-competitive as firms can raise prices to "locked-in" consumers, at least up to the cost of switching to a lower-priced alternative. However, there is some evidence, both theoretical and empirical, that tends to show the opposite. Namely, suppliers,...

Historically, pandemics lead to labor shortages, and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-21 proved to be no different. While there are many explanations for supply-chain issues reported in a number of industries, the proximate cause for ongoing problems in producing, processing, and delivering food to...