This paper constructs a model of a supply chain to examine how demand volatility is passed upstream through the chain. In particular, we seek to determine how likely it is that the chain experiences a bullwhip effect, where the variance of the upstream firm's production exceeds the variance of...

This paper constructs a model of a supply chain to examine how demand volatility is passed upstream through the chain. In particular, we seek to determine how likely it is that the chain experiences a bullwhip effect, where the variance of the upstream firms’ production exceeds the variance of...

Recent work in the supply chain literature suggests that the variance in orders placed with suppliers will be larger than that of sales to buyers. This distortion in demand information increases as it is passed along the supply chain from customers to upstream suppliers and has been referred to...

This paper investigates whether the bullwhip has economic consequences at the firm level. In particular, we examine the relation between the bullwhip and various accounting/financial performance measures including equity returns, cash flows, earnings, and earnings attributes such as earnings...

To mitigate the bullwhip effect in a supply chain, Lee et al. (1997) advocated the idea of sharing demand and order information among different supply chain entities by using compatible MRP or ERP systems. Even with full supply chain visibility afforded by an MRP system and no information...

Two laboratory experiments on a single-echelon inventory task show that inventory durability interacts with transit lags to create order volatility that exceeds demand volatility (the bullwhip effect). Durability creates bullwhip effects because players adjust orders insufficiently to reflect...

Many theoretical models adopt a normative approach and assume that decision-makers are perfect optimizers. In contrast, this paper takes a descriptive approach and proposes a decision framework of bounded rationality, in which decision-makers are prone to errors and biases. In our model, while...

Sebastian de la Fuente is the sixth largest supermarket chain in the Basque region of Spain. It has a novel dataset of 108,605 observations on 3,745 SKUs, collected for almost 2 1/2 years. I find the bullwhip effect in the data: at least 80% of the SKUs have a bigger variance in supplies than...

The extant literature acknowledges the role of overseas subsidiaries in the growth and development of multinational companies (MNCs). Such subsidiaries are viewed as critical players in the innovation process at MNCs. Although this topic has gained importance, it remains largely under-researched...