Self-executing smart contract is believed to revolutionize global procurement by eliminating payment delay and enhancing transaction efficiency. This paper studies the value of smart contract in global procurement, and how the tariff regulations (specific tariff and ad valorem tariff) would...

In this paper, we study the impact of demand uncertainty on the build-operate-transfer (BOT) contract design by optimizing a bi-objective problem via three critical decisions: toll, capacity and concession period. We derive the optimums and identify the public and private sector’s economic...

Many U.S. IT companies began to realize the important role of tax planning in recent years and started strategically establishing retail subsidiaries in favorable tax jurisdictions. Significant increase of after-tax profits can be achieved by internally trading their own intellectual properties,...

In practice, agency e-commerce is also referred to as e-marketplace, where copycats that have nearly identical “consumption quality” with the genuine products are commonly observed. The e-marketplace may not have incentives to combat copycats, so we observe many brands are using a truly new...

Abstract: In practice, consumption quality refers to “production quality + category image”, where the former is determined by a contract manufacturer (CM) and the latter is promoted by an industry leader. In this paper, we explore whether the industry leader should cooperate with the CM...

AI livestream with virtual anchors enables the global brands to promote products by transcending cultural disparities. So the novel business model incorporating AI livestream in cross-border operations is worth investigating to show the tradeoffs in the global brands’ decision between AI and...

E-tailers such as Amazon and JD.com have long been criticized for the co-existence of copycat and genuine products sold on their platforms. Although many brands have developed blockchain-based digital manufacturing systems which can enable the traceability of the genuine products, consumers...

Facing the urgent demand of medical devices for COVID-19 treatment, many automakers have recently begun manufacturing ventilators, even though they are inefficient in production and uninformed of demand variability. To help them, some incumbent ventilator manufacturers choose to voluntarily...