From monetary policies to the climate change problem, from the burden of private credit card debts to the evaluation of public projects, discount rate is the central issue, yet there is little clear understanding about the nature of discounting. In this paper, applying a newly developed production theory, we discuss how discount rate is related to other factors in social systems, such as risk, ...

This paper investigates the coordination mechanism for a supply chain with one manufacturer and two competing retailers when the demands are disrupted. This differs from conventional supply chain coordination models under a static case. We will consider different scenarios of the problem: the production deviation cost may be either incurred to the manufacturer or to the retailers; the supply ch...

We consider a discrete time Markov Decision Process, where the objectives are linear combinations of standard discounted rewards, each with a diierent discount factor. We describe several applications that motivate the recent interest in these criteria. For the special case where a standard discounted cost is to be minimized, subject to a constraint on another standard discounted cost but with ...

Discount rate changes always receive considerable attention in financial markets. Two hypotheses compete to explain financial market reactions: the direct ‘borrowing cost effect’ and the announcement effect. This paper examines the issue for the Bundesbank’s discount rate changes after 1979. Summing up we find that market reactions cannot be attributed to a direct borrowing cost effect but excl...

Medicare beneficiaries used prescription drug discount cards, both Medicare and non-Medicare cards, to assist them in paying for the cost of prescription drugs. This article describes the beneficiary's awareness and understanding, sources of information, and experience with drug discount cards a year prior and during the implementation of the Medicare-Approved Prescription Drug Discount Card pr...

Background: Determining the optimum shipment quantity in a traditional production system is competitive business dimension, and developing reliable policy decisive for long-term objectives. Currently, significant research this domain has mainly focused on lot sizing perfect without considering imperfections processes logistics. It been well established that real inventory acts as an imperfectio...