A buyer seeking to outsource production may be able to find ways to reduce a potential supplier's cost, e.g., by suggesting improvements to the supplier's proposed production methods. We study how a buyer could use such "cost reduction investigations" by proposing a three-step supplier selection...

Contracts providing payments for not developing natural areas, or for removing cropland from production, generally require long-term commitments. Landowners, however, can decide to prematurely terminate the contract when the opportunity cost of complying with conservation requirements increases....

By means of a constructive example we show that clustering of Locational Marginal Prices (LMPs) might give unsatisfactory results of zonal division of energy market. Specifically, we find that the division obtained from clustering of LMPs in some cases may not place the congested lines on the...