We study a manufacturer that faces a supplier privileged with private information about supply disruptions. We investigate how risk-management strategies of the manufacturer change and examine whether risk-management tools are more or less valuable in the presence of such asymmetric information....

The risk of supply disruptions because of suppliers' financial problems plays a prominent role in manufacturers' risk portfolios. Even large suppliers (e.g., Delphi) could file for bankruptcy, and manufacturers' actions, such as financial subsidies to suppliers, profoundly affect suppliers'...

We study the effects of disruption risk in a supply chain where one retailer deals with competing risky suppliers who may default during their production lead times. The suppliers, who compete for business with the retailer by setting wholesale prices, are leaders in a Stackelberg game with the...

The American public raised serious concerns about product safety in 2007, when the number of product recalls broke a new record. Following a temporary drop in 2008, both the number and retail value of recalled units have been increasing, despite various efforts exerted by government agencies and...

This paper analyzes a unit-contingent power purchase agreement between an electricity distributor and a power plant. Under such a contract the distributor pays the plant a fixed price if the plant is operational and nothing if plant outage occurs. Pricing a unit-contingent contract is...

We study a buyer's strategic use of a dual-sourcing option when facing suppliers possessing private information about their disruption likelihood. We solve for the buyer's optimal procurement contract. We show that the optimal contract can be interpreted as the buyer choosing between...

Recent cases of product adulteration by foreign suppliers have compelled many manufacturers to rethink approaches to deterring suppliers from cutting corners, especially when manufacturers cannot fully monitor and control the suppliers' actions. In this paper, we study three mechanisms for...