This paper demonstrates that an important role of intermediaries in supply chains is to reduce the ®nancial risk faced by retailers. It is well known that risk averse retailers when faced by the classical single-period inventory (newsvendor) problem will order less than the expected value maximizing (newsboy) quantity. We show that in such situations a risk neutral distributor can o€er a menu o...

For as long as there have been supply chains, there have been disruptions, and no supply chain, logistics system, or infrastructure network is immune to them. Nevertheless, supply-chain disruptions have only recently begun to receive significant attention from practitioners and researchers. One reason for this growing interest is the spate of recent high-profile disruptions, such as September 1...

Social responsibility is a key factor that could result in success and achieving great benefits for supply chains. Responsiveness and reliability are important social responsibility measures for consumers and all stakeholders that strategists and company managers should be concerned about them in long-term planning horizon. Although, presence of uncertainties as an intrinsic part of supply chai...

We develop a price competition model for a new supply chain that competes in a market comprised of some rival supply chains. The new supply chain has one risk-neutral manufacturer and one risk-averse retailer in which the manufacturer is a leader and retailer is a follower. The manufacturer pays a fraction of the risk cost (caused by demand uncertainty) to the retailer. We apply this competitiv...

This article investigates the pricing of options when the demand curve is downward sloping. Our speciÞc application arises in a supply chain setting, where a manufacturer offers the retailer the right to reorder items at a Þxed price and/or the right to return unsold goods for a predetermined salvage value. We show that the introduction of option contracts causes the wholesale price to increase...

Alejandro Serrano MIT-Zaragoza International Logistics Program, Zaragoza Logistics Center, Zaragoza, Spain. [email protected] Rogelio Oliva Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX MIT-Zaragoza International Logistics Program, Zaragoza Logistics Center, Zaragoza, Spain. [email protected] Santiago Kraiselburd MIT-Zaragoza International Logistics Program, Zaragoza Logistics...

In the past decade, we have seen significant increase in the level of outsourcing in many industries. This increase in the level of outsourcing increases the importance of implementing effective contracts in supply chains. In this thesis, we study several issues in supply chain contracts. In the first part of the thesis, we study the impact of effort in a supply chain with multiple retailers. T...