Investment Decisions of the Blockchain-Based Anti-Counterfeiting Traceability Service in A High-Quality Fresh Supply Chain

Applications of the blockchain-based anti-counterfeiting traceability system (hereafter, blockchain-based ACTS) present a positive result in helping improve the repeat purchase rate and the product circulation rate. However, using the blockchain-based ACTS needs chain members’ additional expenditure. They want to know investment conditions about the blockchain-based ACTS and how to coordinate the supply chain. To solve these problems, we chosen a supply chain with one fresh producer and one retailer as the study object. Afterwards, considering the changes of the repeat purchase rate and the product circulation rate, we revised the demand function. Then, we constructed the profit functions before and after adopting the blockchain-based ACTS, and then a price discount and revenue-sharing contract was put forward to coordinate the supply chain. Findings: with the growth of the repurchase rate, benefits of chain members in the proposed three situations will increase. Thus, we can know that after using the blockchain-based ACTS.

Effects of using non-conventional feedstuffs on the productivity and costs of egg farms in Ibadan, Nigeria

This study examines effects of privately producing layers mash by including such non-conventional feedstuff as cassava, brewers dried grain, etc on the productivity, cost and profit of poultry (eggs) farms. Primary data was collected from three categories of farms -12 "conventional feedstuff users" (CFU), 24 "non-conventional feedstuff users" (NCFU) and 10 Animal Care concentrate users" (ACCU) found in a sample survey of 46 private feed using farms in Egbeda and Lagelu Local Government area of Ibadan. Estimates of their production, total variable cost and profit functions obtained by ordinary least squares as well as analyses of variance conducted on their production and cost statistics revealed that no sufficient evidence exists to suggest that productivity levels differ across the three categories of farms, but NCFU significantly lower average cost and more profits per trm of eggs produced than the CFU. No sufficient evidence, however, exists to suggest that ACCU had any significantly different cost or profit per tray of eggs produced from those of CFU.

Strategy selection of inventory financing based on overconfident retailer

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>Overconfidence of financing enterprises in market demand will have a significant impact on their business decision-making and banks' decision-making. This paper constructs the demand function based on the retailer's overconfidence and establishes the profit functions of the retailer and the bank respectively. Through Stackelberg game analysis, the influence of the retailer's overconfidence on each decision variable can be analyzed. The study has the following findings. Firstly, overconfidence makes decision-making deviate from rational decision-making. Secondly, the relationship between loan-to-value ratio and overconfidence is affected by different factors when the banks know the market or do not understand the market. Thirdly, the relationship between retailer's default probability and overconfidence is different when the bank doesn't know the market or knows the market. Fourthly, when the bank does not understand the market but listen to the overconfident retailer's market analysis, he should choose fixed loan-to-value ratio for financing. The overconfident retailer can ask the bank to give a higher loan-to-value ratio to reduce the capital pressure. Fifthly, when the bank conducts market research, the bank should choose the variable loan-to-value ratio contract for financing, while the retailer only needs to make decisions according to the bank's lending strategy.</p>

The Optimal Limit Prices of Limit Orders under an Extended Geometric Brownian Motion with Bankruptcy Risk

In the Black and Scholes system, the underlying asset price model follows geometric Brownian motion (GBM) with no bankruptcy risk. While GBM is a commonly used model in financial markets, bankruptcy risk should be considered in the case of a severe economic crisis, such as that caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The omission of bankruptcy risk could considerably influence the setting of a trading strategy. In this article, we adopt an extended GBM model that considers the bankruptcy risk and study its optimal limit price problem. A limit order is a classical trading strategy for investing in stocks. First, we construct the explicit expressions of the expected discounted profit functions for sell and buy limit orders and then derive their optimal limit prices. Furthermore, via sensitivity analysis, we discuss the influence of the omission of bankruptcy risk in executing limit orders.

Joint optimal decisions on pricing and warranty policy of duopoly supply chain with one common retailer

Early researches related to the interaction between manufactures for complementary products, mainly considered price as only the dimension of competition. With the increasing competition in capturing the market share, manufactures cannot compete by only lowering prices. In this paper, we assume that besides the price, the manufactures choose warranty as the competitive strategy of two different but substitutable products in a duopoly supply chain with one common retailer. Furthermore, two cases are considered (i) only one manufacturer adopts warranty policy as a competitive strategy against the other, (ii) both manufacturers offer warranty on their product, to study under which situation offering a warranty becomes more profitable for a manufacturer while the other competitive manufacturer has already adopted warranty policy. The profit functions of the manufacturers and the retailer are then maximized under manufacturers' cooperative and non-cooperative strategies. We then compare the scenarios under different decision strategies numerically, which gives some insights on changes of key parameters to help the decision makers to capture the market.

Research on the Loss Sharing Contract in Supply Chain Under Asymmetric Information

In this study, the coordination contract of internal and external losses of supply chain under asymmetric information is studied. Firstly, the profit functions of supplier and manufacturer are established respectively. Secondly, the contract under unilateral and bilateral moral hazard is designed. Finally, a numerical example is given to analyze the coordination contract. It is proved that the overall coordination of supply chain can be achieved through loss sharing contract, and the quality level and overall profit can be improved.

Improvement of academic performance by studying in pairs

This paper focuses on analysing the process of partnership formation and its effects on academic performance. We model the formation of studying partnerships as a Bayesian game. Students utility functions are in the spirit of firms' profit functions where the time they devote to study is the input to produce human capital. Academic skills are uniformly distributed, and every student is assumed to know her academic skills. We find that a student decides to study with a classmate because she believes that the classmate has better academics skills. We also find that, in equilibrium, the time a student is willing to spend studying with a classmate increases with the mean and the variance of the distribution of the academic skills. Therefore, under incomplete information, we expect students to devote more time studying with a classmate regardless whether they are studying in a high standard school.