T bullwhip effect is a major source of supply chain inefficiency. Whereas prior literature has identified a number of potential contributing factors and recommended such remedies as information sharing enabled by information technology (IT) or electronic linkage (EL), few studies have provided empirical support. We use industry-level data to examine whether EL use with buyer and supplier indust...

The paper investigates firms’ behavior and outcomes (levels of costreducing R&D, output, profit and welfare in equilibrium) in a differentiated duopoly with process innovation. One of the important features in this paper is that spillovers operate in the R&D stage and are tied to the degree of product substitutability as well as the extent of technological proximity/alienation of the research p...

Buffers decouple fluctuations in the material flow. It is common wisdom in industry that a full buffer indicates a downstream bottleneck and an empty buffer indicates an upstream bottleneck. Numerous different bottleneck detection methods use this approach to detect the bottlenecks. However, so far this common wisdom on the shop floor has not yet been verified academically. The authors tested t...

Using a Hotelling-type product differentiation model (linear city model), we investigate the location strategies of upstream and downstream firms. We show that when transport costs of upstream firms are large, higher transport costs decrease the level of product differentiation of downstream firms. We also show that more inefficient transport technologies of upstream firms may enhance welfare. ...