The Window Fill Rate in a Multiple Location Inventory System with Periodic Review and Order Crossover

Deliveries in global supply chains are often made through lengthy shipping routes that are subject to many delays such as border crossings, inspections and so forth. Consequently, orders frequently crossover, that is, their order of arrival is not the same as the order that they were issued. In this paper we model a multiple location inventory system with Poisson demand and periodic review in which orders may crossover. The system’s performance measure is the window fill rate, i.e., the probability that a customer arriving to the system is served within her tolerable wait. We show that when spares are scarce the system’s overall performance decreases if spares are allotted equitably. Additionally, we show that there is a linear tradeoff between the tolerable wait and the number of spares needed to maintain a given performance level. The observations have practical implications to inventory mangers. First, that when resources are scarce it is optimal to cluster spares to only few locations. In contrast, when resources are abundant, then a more equitable solution is optimal. Second, that it is possible to design simple contracts that reward customers for their patience, or alternatively, that charge customers a premium for expedited service.

3. Form

English law recognizes only two kinds of contract: the contract made by deed, and the simple contract. A contract made by deed derives its validity solely from the form in which it is expressed. A simple contract as a general rule need not be made in any special form, but requires the presence of consideration, which broadly means that something must be given in exchange for a promise. This chapter examines contracts by deed and (simple) contracts for which writing is required.

The provision of wage incentives: A structural estimation using contracts variation

We address empirically the issues of the optimality of simple linear compensation contracts and the importance of asymmetries between firms and workers. For that purpose, we consider contracts between the French National Institute of Statistics and Economics (Insee) and the interviewers it hired to conduct its surveys in 2001, 2002, and 2003. To derive our results, we exploit an exogenous change in the contract structure in 2003, the piece rate increasing from 20.2 to 22.9 euros. We argue that such a change is crucial for a structural analysis. It allows us, in particular, to identify and recover nonparametrically some information on the cost function of the interviewers and on the distribution of their types. This information is used to select correctly our parametric restrictions. Our results indicate that the loss of using such simple contracts instead of the optimal ones is no more than 16%, which might explain why linear contracts are so popular. We also find moderate costs of asymmetric information in our data, the loss being around 22% of what Insee could achieve under complete information.

An Analysis of Regulative Speech Acts in English Contracts - Qualitative and Quantitative Methods

This paper deals with the language used to express legal speech acts in simple contracts within the field of English Contract Law. The central objects of study are regulative functions, i.e. directive and commissive speech acts with a particular view to establishing realisation patterns of these rhetorical functions. The hypothesis that the speech acts subjecte to analysis are homogeneously distributed linguistic realisations typical for simple contracts is tested by means of partly manual analysis, partly machine-based quantification of the data of investigation. The findings show that statistically significant items are distributed homogenously in the corpus examined, and that the choice of individual strategies can be interpreted in terms of the face redress required by the socio-pragmatic situation.