Location-Routing Problem of Emergency Facilities under Uncertain Demand by Branch-Price and Cut

This paper studies the location-routing problem of emergency facilities with time window under demand uncertainty. We propose a robust mathematical model in which uncertain requirements are represented by two forms: the support set defined by cardinal constraint set. When the demand value of rescue point changes in a given definition set, the model can ensure the feasibility of each line. We propose a branch and price cutting algorithm, whose pricing problem is a robust resource-constrained shortest path problem. In addition, we take the Wenchuan Earthquake as an example to verify the practicability of the method. The robust model is simulated under different uncertainty levels and distributions and compared with the scheme obtained by the deterministic problem. The results show that the robust model can run successfully and maintain its robustness, and the robust model provides better protection against demand uncertainty. In addition, we find that cost is more sensitive to uncertainty level than protection level, and our proposed model also allows controlling the robustness level of the solution by adjusting the protection level. In all experiments, the cost of robustness is that the routing cost increases by an average of 13.87%.

Systemic Risk Caused by the Overlapping Portfolios of Banks Under a Bilateral Network

Frequent financial crises and economic globalization have made systemic risk a growing Research Topic. This paper constructs a dynamic banking system model based on the bank-asset bilateral network. By collecting the balance sheet and portfolio data of 47 Chinese listed banks in 2018, the paper firstly empirically analyses the impact of external shocks, the price-cutting effect, and the proportion of various assets held by banks to their total assets on the systemic risk of the banking system. The risk preference coefficient and systemic shock are then introduced to construct the banks' quantitative portfolio strategy model to study its optimal investment. It has been found that the greater the external shock and the stronger the price-cutting effect, the higher the systemic risk. Moreover, the external shock and price-cutting effect will have a superimposed effect within a specific range, and systemic risk will increase significantly. The asset classes of the Chinese banking system have a different sensitivity to external shocks, among which loan assets are the most sensitive. Further studies reveal an inflection point of risk preference, resulting in banks' expected return “increasing first and then decreasing.” The higher the debt-asset ratio and the stronger the banks' risk tolerance, the more aggressive investment strategies banks can choose to achieve high returns. This paper provides a reference for the banking industry to react to shocks and analyze systemic risk.

Why Abandon the Paradise? Stations’ Incentives to Reduce Gasoline Prices at First

The German petrol station market is characterized by strong intraday price cycles, which probably correspond to the well-known Edgeworth cycles. The prices go up strongly in the late evening or in the middle of the night, fall relatively heavily in the early morning, and then go up and down several times in the course of the day. Locally, the analysis is limited to the 26 petrol stations that plausibly form a common market in the Lueneburg region. This paper picks out the specific sequence in which, after generally rising prices during the day, a single supplier is the first to reverse the price trend and lower its price. For this purpose, current price reports are used to define the price reduction event down to the second, and to show only the valid prices of competitors prior to the event. All German petrol stations have to report price changes to the Bundeskartellamt's Market Transparency Department. Tankerkoenig then publishes the full reports. This results in one panel observation for each price reduction event. Out of nearly 300,000 price observations, just over 10,000 panel observations result. Fixed-effect logit estimates are used to test whether the theoretically and economically significant price differences of the Edgeworth cycles explain the behavior of the price cutters, or whether market structure factors, such as brand affiliation/independence of the petrol station, service offerings, or location characteristics predict price-cutting behavior. The novel recording of the price dynamics in the petrol station market by using the accurate petrol station price data to the second indicates promising research of extensive price data and avoids the enormous loss of information in the previously common calculation of average prices at certain times.

Vodafone India Ltd: Managing in a Turbulent Emerging Market

Along with the global telecom sector, the Indian telecom market has evolved over the past three decades. From the first generation technology in the 1990s, the telecom industry in India offered 4G services in 2012. From microwave technology it has moved into underground fibre optic cables, enhancing the quality and variety of telecom services. Ahead of several emerging markets, subscriber demand in India shifted to data from voice telephony. Subscriber base grew substantially, but average revenue per user (ARPU) has fallen significantly. Intense competition has led to consolidation in the industry. The mobile services faced market disruption from Reliance Jio (R-Jio). The latter launched a strategy of predatory pricing resulting in data wars. R-Jio’s network was based on 4G technology, while other competitors were still offering 2G- and 3G-based services. In comparison to competitors, R-Jio laid more fibre optic cables. Therefore, it could effortlessly upgrade the services offerings to 5G and other future technologies, which competitors could not match so they experienced fall in profits or outright losses. R-Jio also moved into providing fibre-to-the-home technology accompanied with ultra-high-speed internet that could provide a host of entertainment features. As a virtual knee-jerk reaction to the severity of the competitive challenge facing it, Vodafone initiated merger talks with Idea Cellular and soon achieved its culmination. This merger resulted in the largest telecom service company in India. However, Vodafone Idea Ltd.’s balance sheet was over leveraged, rendering it incapable of playing the price cutting game. Besides, it was unclear if it would be able to build the formidable infrastructure required to invest in 5G spectrum, offer superior content as well as smart devices. It soon became obvious that the merger could catapult Vodafone to the pole position in the industry but staying and flourishing there would require it to be more resourceful, imaginative and aggressive. Balesh Sharma, the CEO of Vodafone-Idea Ltd., and his top management team had to respond to the challenges the company was facing and emerge successful.

Covid-19 and Local Business Responses: Evidence from South Africa’s most Tourism-Dependent Locality

In emerging tourism scholarship around COVID-19 one of the major clusters of research surrounds issues of adaptation. Tourism businesses are compelled to adapt to shifts in consumer demand as well as government regulatory changes. The objective in this paper is to investigate the responses and adaptations to the impacts of COVID-19 of tourism businesses in South Africa’s most tourism-dependent locality. The research reports on 20 qualitative interviews undertaken with a cross-section of tourism enterprises in Bela-Bela Local Municipality, Limpopo province, which is overwhelmingly oriented towards the market of domestic tourism. Major results are local businesses are financially negatively impacted by the subdued nature of domestic leisure travel together with the near total collapse of business travel as well as the imperative to conform to new COVID-19 safety and health protocols. Adaptive responses have included downsizing of businesses, including worker retrenchments, price-cutting, limited initiatives towards product diversification, energetic social media marketing and repurposing of properties. Key challenges for Bela-Bela tourism enterprises relate to immediate financial issues and most especially in the context that minimal support has been provided by national government to assist their business survival. Future business prospects are not viewed favourably such that business closures and a hollowing out of the tourism enterprise base accompanying job losses in tourism appear inevitable.

Global Status of Biosimilars and Its Influential Factors

The history of biosimilars started at European Union (EU) in 2006 with one product; however, currently it has been recognized everywhere in the world and EU have highest 64 biosimilar products. United States Food & Drug Administration (USFDA) was little unadventurous with biosimilars; nevertheless, they approved the first biosimilar 09 years after EU approval and presently they have 28 biosimilars which are playing significant role in price cutting of branded biologics. They also have so many biosimilars in product pipeline. Economically emerging countries especially China & India are very aggressive with biosimilars. In view of easy regulation, cheap labor & other cost related factors they are in little advantageous than the rivalries. Under Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme Australian government is encouraging biosimilars and they already approved 20 biosimilars. Japan, Korea, Canada, South Africa are also promoting biosimilars. However, it is worth mentioning that in spite of enormous potentiality and rapid growth till to date biosimilar market is insignificant compared to total pharmaceutical market and success of biosimilars will depend on the acceptance by the physicians, treatment cost reduction, trust on manufacturer, proper information, drug substitution, efficacy, safety etc.

Price-Cutting Trends in New Drugs after Listing in South Korea: The Effect of the Reimbursement Review Pathway on Price Reduction

This study aims to analyze the trends of post-listing price changes for new drugs listed from 2007, when the health technology assessment (HTA) was introduced in South Korea, until 2017. We analyzed 135 products that have undergone price cuts. These products were analyzed by their respective review pathways, namely, pharmaco-economic study (PE), weighted average price (WAP), and the without a cost-effectiveness (CE) pathway. Prices were discounted faster in PE than in WAP (p = 0.002 in a comparison between PE and WAP). In addition, the median discount rate of the first price cut was 5.0% (range: 0.1–20.0) for PE, 3.0% (range: <0.1–30.0) for WAP, and 5.0% (range: 0.6–10.9) without a CE pathway. The median cumulative discount rate of PE and WAP showed that the PE pathway products’ discount rates were higher: 10.4% for PE and 6.0% for WAP (p = 0.025 for comparison between PE and WAP). It is necessary to discuss the practical effects of the price-cutting system from a myriad of perspectives, including insurance finance, the value of new drugs, and the accessibility of new drugs to patients.

Economic challenges of oncological diseases’ pharmacotherapy

Oncological diseases rank high in the structure of population morbidity and mortality. They entail considerable direct and indirect economic costs. In the past decades, the cost of oncotherapy has increased significantly, which is largely conditioned by high prices of antitumor drugs, which on average increased by ten times in the past ten years. At the same time, many innovative medications have only minor advantages over cheaper old medications because they are registered based on the data on the achievement of the surrogate endpoint – extension of progression-free survival. The high cost of oncotherapy is associated with financial toxicity that affects negatively the patients’ quality of life, their adherence to treatment and consequently survival. To reduce the cost of oncotherapy, it is necessary to conduct pharma-economic analysis, the results of which can serve as the basis to negotiate price-cutting with the manufacturers, as well as to use high-quality generics and biosimilars as effective and safe as their originals, and to monitor effectiveness and safety of all antitumor drugs within the pharmacovigilance framework.

The Japanese Electric Power Policy Studied through the Business Structure of the Power Industry: A Long-term Analysis before and after "Deregulation"

The Federation of Electric Power Companies (FEPC) of Japan has long been releasing the detailed financial statements of their member corporations (on their website). We have analyzed the transition of Japan's electric power policy through the business structure of the electric power industry using the FEPC financial data over 53 years. Thus, we have clarified the problems and distortions built into the power industry by Japan's power policy as stated in the following: (1) During the regulation period, the dual-price mechanism for the industrial use and the home-use sectors had been effectuated, where (2) the former shared two thirds of the power demand but yielded only small profits or even losses; and the latter, sharing only one third of the demand, yielded nearly all of the industry's profits; however, (3) since the start of complete retail deregulation, this dual-price mechanism has come to suffer paralysis and the power majors began a cutthroat competition, which now seems to result in diminution of profitability in the home-use sector (the industry's former treasure box). This price-cutting war is considered very dangerous for the sustainability of this industry because this business is highly equipment-intensive and is severely vulnerable to any revenue instability. Meanwhile, declining demand due to the declining population is inevitable, and the power infrastructure will become excessively capacitive against demand. At the policy level of the government, recognition to this is overwhelmingly short. There is a possibility that the most powerful risk of both the electric power industries and social economy will be the way of the electric power policy that leads electricity demand from the expected growth rate and prepares the power supply configuration based on it.

A multistage budgeting approach to the analysis of dairy demand in urban China

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to estimate the elasticities of demand for different dairy products, such as fresh milk, powdered milk and yoghourt, in urban China. Design/methodology/approach The household survey data are drawn from the annual Urban Household Survey in a Chinese province from 2007 to 2009 by applying a three-stage budgeting approach with zero consumption. Findings The major findings show that fluid milk is the most popular dairy product among urban households in Guangdong province, China. Demand for fresh milk is price elastic with the highest value being −1.043, indicating that price-cutting promotion programs could be carried out by dairy enterprises to increase dairy consumption. With improvements in the living standards, the demand for dairy will lead to an expansion in the size of the dairy market and will simultaneously open up new development opportunities for dairy enterprises. Originality/value This study adopts an Almost Ideal Demand System model inserted into inverse Mills ratios in the third stage to resolve the common problem of obtaining censored data on zero consumption observations. The research findings will provide a reference for policy makers and for enterprises in developing some price-cutting promotion programs.