Optimal recycling price strategy of clothing enterprises based on closed-loop supply chain

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>More and more garment enterprises begin to pay attention to the importance of recycling, take the corresponding recycling strategy to recycle garment products and remanufacture, forming a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC). In reality, recycling is a complex system, the recycling strategy of clothing brands will not only affect the reverse channel of closed-loop supply chain, but also affect the consumer demand of forward channel, and then affect the profit of supply chain. In order to solve this problem, we propose a CLSC composed of a manufacturer, a retailer and a collector, establish three different Stackelberg leadership models, and derive the optimal recycling strategy. Our results show that consumers' sensitivity to the recycling price will affect the optimal decision of supply chain members. The increase of the recycling market is not always beneficial to the profits of supply chain members. By comparing the profits of the three models, it is found that the retailer leadership model is the most effective scenario of CLCS. The results of this paper provide a reference for garment enterprises to formulate recycling strategies.</p>

Passive Cross-Holding in a Stackelberg Oligopoly

We show that bilateral cross-holding can be profitable for firms with symmetric technologies in a Stackelberg oligopoly. Furthermore, if firms involved in cross-holding obtain a strategic advantage to be the leaders (i.e. Stackelberg leadership through cross-holding), such cross-holding will improve both consumer surplus and social welfare. We also discuss robustness of our main results with respect to convex costs and product differentiation.

Outsourcing versus technology transfer: Hotelling meets Stackelberg

This paper considers a Hotelling duopoly with two firms A and B in the final good market. Both A and $B$ can produce the required intermediate good, firm B having a lower cost due to a superior technology. We compare two contracts: outsourcing (A orders the intermediate good from B) and technology transfer (B transfers its technology to A). First we show that an outsourcing order acts as a credible commitment on part of A to maintain a certain market share in the final good market. This generates an indirect Stackelberg leadership effect, which is absent in a technology transfer contract. We show that compared to the situation of no contracts, there are always Pareto improving outsourcing contracts but no Pareto improving technology transfer contracts. Finally, it is shown that whenever both firms prefer one of the two contracts, all consumers prefer the other contract.

Endogenous Stackelberg leadership within a team. The coalition effect

The article engages in a theoretical investigation of the possibility of implementing the Stackelberg strategy within a team. It is assumed that the team gene-rates aggregate income that increases as the efforts invested by each agent intensify, subject to the law of diminishing returns. The goal of each agent in a team is to maximize his own individual gain. In order to achieve an outcome that is Paretopreferable over Nash equilibrium, two approaches may be used: identifying a leader or forming a smaller group (coalition) within the team whose members, in pursuance of increased individual gains, choose the route that maximizes coalition gains. It is shown that the advent of a coalition in a team results in Pareto-improvement in a simultaneous game. We analyse the possibility of endogenous leadership forming according to the Stackelberg model when using the mechanism of timing decisions. It is established that under autonomy of all team members, leadership formation can only be confidently predicted in specific individual cases. In a significantly more general case, all of the prerequisites for the formation of leadership are created by the presence of a single coalition interested in implementing the Stackelberg strategy.

Stackelberg leader in a collective action model

Within a mathematical modelling framework, we analyze the conditions allowing a self-governedcollective to achieve Stackelberg equilibrium. It is assumed that members of the collective generate common income through individual effort, which income is then distributed among all members of the collective according to their predetermined share. Effort invested by each agent wields (imposes) a positive influence on the marginal income resulting from the effort invested by any other agent. Each member of the collective aims to maximize their individual gain. Within a model built on the most general principles, it is shown that a Stackelberg equilibrium outcome is preferable over Nash equilibrium. The model, utilizing the special case of income function and private costs functions; helps identify the correlation between the agents’ efforts and their individual characteristics such as the agent’s share in the income, income elasticity by effort, and subjective valuation of private costs. It is shown that additional income generatedby the move (transition) from Nash to Stackelberg equilibrium depends only on the elasticity of income vs. the leader’s effort, and the sum of elasticity indexes for all members of the collective. We introduce the definition and the conditions for the existence of a distinctive agent, who acts as a Stackelberg leader and ensures maximum individual gain for each member of the collective (including their own). The absence of a distinctive agent in a collective gives rise to the Stackelberg leadership problem, as each member of the collective is only able to obtain maximum gains when acting as a follower.

Zoltek

In 1996, the St. Louis-based manufacturer Zoltek launched a massive expansion of capacity to produce commercial-grade carbon fiber, a composite material used to produce a wide variety of end products ranging from sporting goods to windmill blades. Zoltek's goal was to become the dominant firm in a market whose growth was expected to be spectacular starting in the late 1990s. Describes Zoltek's major strategic moves in the mid-1990s and provides a possible example of the Stackelberg leadership model from oligopoly theory.To explore the economic logic of a major capacity commitment.