Features like the distributed ledger, consensus mechanism, asymmetric encryption technology, smart contract and Token of blockchain can lower transaction cost, enhance trust between customers merchants, as well eliminate false payment consumer information leakage, problems which are common in current cross-border E-Commerce platform. Based on analysis existing scholars, this paper studied two m...

T format of pricing contracts varies substantially across business contexts, a major variable being whether a contract imposes a fixed fee payment. This paper examines how the use of the fixed fee in pricing contracts affects market outcomes of a manufacturer-retailer channel. Standard economic theories predict that channel efficiency increases with the introduction of the fixed fee and is inva...

A capitation payment arrangement can be an effective means to control health care costs, because it allows both the insurer and the employer to predict costs for health care services more accurately. This article describes a six-step methodology for developing a capitation payment rate and establishing such arrangements. The six steps are: (1) determine the delivery system cost base, (2) develo...

Health care payers have implemented pay-for-performance contracts without explicit characterization of the underlying quality problem or an understanding of the interaction between pay-for-performance and existing payment mechanisms. In this paper, ine cient quality of health care services stems from di culty consumers have in observing some aspects of quality. Traditional health care payment s...

Agents can benefit from contracting some of their tasks that cannot be performed by themselves or that can be performed more efficiently by other agents. Developing an agent’s contracting strategy in the University of Michigan Digital Library (UMDL), however, is not easy for the following reasons. The UMDL consists of self-interested agents who will perform a task of another agent’s only when d...

W e analyze a decentralized supply chain with a single risk-averse retailer and multiple risk-averse suppliers under a Conditional Value at Risk objective. We define coordinating contracts and show that the supply chain is coordinated only when the least risk-averse agent bears the entire risk and the lowest-cost supplier handles all production. However, due to competition, not all coordinating...

T he new GMS contract agreed in 2003 is arguably the biggest change in terms of service since the formation of the National Health Service. Work practices, and hence surgery income, will be determined by several income streams, one of which is a quality payment for achieving defined clinical goals. Several of those goals directly or indirectly involve the results of analyses carried out in path...

This Case Study focuses on a cooperation mechanism developed in Costa Rica between La Esperanza Hydropower Project (downstream water user) and the Monteverde Conservation League, a conservation NGO that owns most of the hydropower plant's upper catchment. The objective of the mechanism is to ensure the conservation of forest cover where it already exists, since forests are perceived to provide ...