For most multi-period decision-making problems, it is generally well-accepted that the influence of information about later periods on the optimal decision in the current period reduces as we move farther into the future. If and when this influence reduces to zero, the corresponding problem...

We explore buyback contracts in a supplier–retailer supply chain where the retailer faces a price-dependent downward-sloping demand curve subject to uncertainty. Differentiated from the existing literature,this work focuses on analytically examining how the uncertainty level embedded in market...

The quick response (QR) supply chain system has received a great deal of attention in the recent past because of the advances in many new technologies such as RFID systems and mobile computing. Establishment of supply chain practices, such as collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment...

Cooperative advertising is an important incentive offered by a manufacturer to influence retailers' promotional decisions. We analyze a retail market duopoly where one or both of competing retailers are supported by the manufacturer in their advertising costs. We model the problem as a...

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...

We study a supply chain in which a consumer goods manufacturer sells its product through a retailer. The retailer undertakes promotional expenditures, uch as advertising, to increase sales and to compete against other retailer(s). The manufacturer supports the retailer’s promotional...

This paper introduces the notion of mixed leadership in non-zero-sum differential games, where there is no fixed hierarchy in decision making with respect to the players. Whether a particular player is leader or follower depends on the instrument variable s/he is controlling, and it is possible...

Linear optimal control problems with state inequality constraints is an important class of large systems. This paper shows that a generalized programming formulation of these problems does not result in a decomposition over time or a maximum principle as it does for problems without the state...

We propose a new class of knapsack problems by assiuning that the sizes of the items to be put into a knapsack are known to be elements 0f a given subset S of the positive integers Z'^. The set S is treated as a parameter. We show that the family of knapsack problems obtained by varying the...

We deal with a single or parallel machine manufacturing system with convex cost of holding and backlogging and develop a new rigorous analysis to address the problem. We provide the results needed for the vanishing discount approach used for aour analysis. In particular, we show that one can go...