We consider a decentralized, two-echelon supply chain where the upper echelon --the supplier-- bears the inventory risk. To service the retailers, the supplier either keeps inventory reserved for each of her customers or else pools inventory to share among her customers. The common insight regarding inventory pooling is that it reduces costs and so increases profits for the supply chain party carrying inventory. However, it has recently been shown that inventory pooling may indeed reduce the total supply chain profits. We further show that inventory pooling may reduce supply chain profits even under traditional service contracts based on the frequently invoked measure of service, probability of stock-out. We model the inventory transactions among the retailers and the supplier as a cooperative game. The players have the option of reserving inventory or forming inventory-pooling coalitions. The total profit of the coalitions is allotted to the players using a profit-sharing mechanism based on Shapley value. We analyze the properties of the proposed profit-sharing scheme in two steps. We first consider a stylized model with two retailers who are not necessarily identical. Then we extend the analysis to an arbitrary number of identical retailers. In both cases, we assume the demand across retailers is independent. We find that the Shapley value allocations coordinate the supply chain and are individually rational. However for more than two retailers, they may not be in the core. Even when they satisfy all the stability properties, including membership in the core, they may be perceived unfair since a player's allocation can exceed his contribution to the total supply chain profit. In addition to analyzing the stability properties of the proposed allocation mechanism, we are also interested in the types of behavior the mechanism induces in the players. We find that the retailers prefer pooling partners with either very high or low service level requirements and the supplier prefers retailers with low service requirements since this gives her the ability to maximize her profit allocation. Finally, we analyze the effects of demand variance on the allocations and the profitability of strategic retailer coalitions.

This dissertation takes into account the latest industrial trends in integrated logistical management and focuses on recent supply chain initiatives enabling the coordination of supply chain entities. The specific initiatives of interest rely on carefully designed transportation and supply contracts such as Vendor Managed Inventory applications. With such new initiatives, substantial savings are realizable by carefully coordinating the operational decisions, such as procurement, transportation, inventory, and production decisions, for different cooperating entities in the supply chain. The impact is particularly tangible when coordinated policies address channel coordination issues between these entities. This dissertation first provides a critical review and comparative analysis of the literature on buyer-vendor coordination problems. Recognizing a need for analytical research in the field, the dissertation then develops and solves centralized and decentralized models for complex buyer-vendor coordination problems with applications in supply/replenishment and transportation/delivery contract design. The two specific classes of problems considered include i) buyer-vendor coordination under generalized replenishment costs, and ii) buyer-vendor coordination under depreciating economic value of items. Under these considerations, the dissertation also develops efficient coordination algorithms and new mechanisms for effective channel coordination.

No description available.

Existem evidências de que os produtores de café preferem transacionar via mercado spot ao invés de atuar em mercados de entrega futura ou realizar contratos de longo prazo com a indústria. Se o estabelecimento de contratos permite a redução do risco, quais fatores, associados a estas formas de transação, estariam influenciando a decisão dos cafeicultores? Este trabalho busca relacionar a determinação da forma de governança da transação de venda do café com a maneira como o cafeicultor percebe o risco. Sob a perspectiva da geração da renda, a preferência por relações spot, portanto, de curta duração é justificável? Como o tomador da decisão incorpora sua visão do risco para fazer sua escolha? Para esclarecer tais questões, primeiramente, são conduzidas entrevistas com produtores, visando identificar o perfil dos cafeicultores e entender como, mesmo que implicitamente, eles incorporam a gestão de rico em suas escolhas contratuais. Em seguida, este estudo elabora um modelo de simulação da renda dos produtores utilizando dois cenários, o ocorrido (cenário real) e um cenário com a adoção de contratos que limitem a margem de variação dos preços. / There are evidences pointing that coffee producers rather prefer transact their product through spot market than by future contracts or by long-term contracts with the industry. If the establishment of those contracts allows risk reduction and mitigation, what factors associated with these transaction forms are influencing the producers\' decisions? This study seeks to unite the governance form choice of the coffee selling transaction with the risk observance by the producers. Under the perspective of income generation, the preference for spot transactions is justified? How the decision maker aggregates his risk vision in order to make such choice? To answer those questions, first, an income simulation model is derived, using two scenarios, one using real spot price and another one with hypothetical contracts that diminishes the price fluctuation. Following that, interviews with a few producers take place, in order to understand how they, even if in implicit way, incorporate a risk managing notion to their activity.

<div>Entrepreneurial ventures face a trade-off when receiving corporate venture capital (CVC) financing. They need to give sufficient control rights to motivate and enable corporate investors to provide exclusive resources. However, giving control rights to CVCs whose strategic goals could cause a conflict of interest and lead to opportunism also puts the ventures at risk. This dissertation shows that third-party involvement with the design of passive control rights can be a solution to the trade-off.</div><div><br></div><div><div>By examining venture capital financing contracts in high-tech industries, Essay 1 found that veto power, a prevailing passive control right, of the third party can protect the vulnerable side in the cooperation without hurting the other side’s incentive to contribute. Moreover, two types of veto rights are identified and found to have diverse responses to conflict-of-interest factors in CVC-entrepreneur relationships. The effects of knowledge overlap, CVC parents’ research and development capability, and ventures’ technological quality on the liable third party’s veto power are studied. With a focus on the function of passive control rights, Essay 2 and Essay 3 maintain that allocating control rights can significantly affect the innovation of both CVC corporate parents and CVC-backed ventures under difference contingencies. In particular, as the aforementioned dilemma increases when CVCs’ corporate parents and portfolio firms are competing in product markets, Essay 2 shows that ventures’ innovation performance can benefit from granting CVCs strong active control rights in the condition of low product market overlap and from granting CVCs strong passive control rights within a high product market overlap.</div></div><div><br></div><div><div>On the other hand, Essay 3 shows that CVCs’ control rights will moderate the inverted Ushaped relationship between knowledge overlap and the innovation performance of the corporate parents such that the positive effect of knowledge overlap on CVC parents’ innovation at lower levels of knowledge similarity will be less positive, and the negative effect of knowledge overlap on CVC parents’ innovation at higher levels of knowledge similarity will be less negative, for CVCs with greater control power over their portfolio ventures. Moreover, the moderating effect of active control right is stronger than the moderating effect of passive control right under high degree of technological knowledge overlap between a CVC parent and the CVC’s portfolio ventures. Meanwhile, the moderating effect of passive control rights is stronger than the moderating effect of active control right under high degree of technological knowledge overlap between a CVC parent and the CVC’s portfolio ventures.</div></div>

Existem evidências de que os produtores de café preferem transacionar via mercado spot ao invés de atuar em mercados de entrega futura ou realizar contratos de longo prazo com a indústria. Se o estabelecimento de contratos permite a redução do risco, quais fatores, associados a estas formas de transação, estariam influenciando a decisão dos cafeicultores? Este trabalho busca relacionar a determinação da forma de governança da transação de venda do café com a maneira como o cafeicultor percebe o risco. Sob a perspectiva da geração da renda, a preferência por relações spot, portanto, de curta duração é justificável? Como o tomador da decisão incorpora sua visão do risco para fazer sua escolha? Para esclarecer tais questões, primeiramente, são conduzidas entrevistas com produtores, visando identificar o perfil dos cafeicultores e entender como, mesmo que implicitamente, eles incorporam a gestão de rico em suas escolhas contratuais. Em seguida, este estudo elabora um modelo de simulação da renda dos produtores utilizando dois cenários, o ocorrido (cenário real) e um cenário com a adoção de contratos que limitem a margem de variação dos preços. / There are evidences pointing that coffee producers rather prefer transact their product through spot market than by future contracts or by long-term contracts with the industry. If the establishment of those contracts allows risk reduction and mitigation, what factors associated with these transaction forms are influencing the producers\' decisions? This study seeks to unite the governance form choice of the coffee selling transaction with the risk observance by the producers. Under the perspective of income generation, the preference for spot transactions is justified? How the decision maker aggregates his risk vision in order to make such choice? To answer those questions, first, an income simulation model is derived, using two scenarios, one using real spot price and another one with hypothetical contracts that diminishes the price fluctuation. Following that, interviews with a few producers take place, in order to understand how they, even if in implicit way, incorporate a risk managing notion to their activity.

No description available.

Biofuels, including ethanol and biodiesel, are important components of energy policy in the U.S. and abroad. There is a long history of ethanol production from corn (maize) in the United States and from sugarcane in Brazil. However, there has been a push for greater use of next-generation biofuels (including those derived from cellulosic feedstocks) to mitigate many of the environmental and potential food system impacts of large scale biofuel production. Farmer willingness to grow biomass crops and ensuring adequate feedstock supply are two important challenges impeding large scale commercialization of next-generation biofuels. The costs of transporting bulky, low density biomass will be substantial. Consequently, in the near term, the economic success of next-generation biofuels will hinge on the supply of locally available biomass. As such, agricultural contracts are expected to be an important tool in overcoming the feedstock acquisition challenge. The broad objective of this study is to understand the effect of contracting for non-food energy crops (cellulosic feedstocks) on the agricultural landscape via the displacement of commodity (food) crops on productive cropland. We develop an analytical framework for evaluating the design and use of two different contract structures for securing cellulosic feedstock in a representative supply chain with a biorefinery and farmer. We study the dynamics of scarce land and indirect competition from commodity market production on a biorefinery's equilibrium pricing strategy and the resultant supply of cellulosic biomass. And we consider its sensitivity to various production characteristics and market conditions. We develop a method for quantifying the biorefinery's tradeoff between profit margins and competing for land in order to secure the requisite feedstock for biofuel production. And we characterize the loss of efficiency in the decentralized system, relative to a vertically integrated system, that can be attributed to the need to compete for the farmer's scarce land resource versus that which results from the biorefinery's desire to make a profit. Then we extend our framework to consider multi-year contracts for biomass production and evaluate the importance of land quality, yield variability and contract structure on a farmer's willingness to accept a contract to produce cellulosic feedstock as well as the resulting impact on the agricultural landscape through the displacement of commodity crops. Using switchgrass production in Tennessee as a case study, we develop feedstock supply curves for each contract structure considered and evaluate the conditions and contract prices at which land devoted to various field crops would be displaced by switchgrass based on field trials of switchgrass production in Tennessee and recent USDA data on crop prices and production.

This study examines small and medium scale specialty crop growers’ preferences for marketing contract attributes and willingness to adopt blockchain-based smart contracts. The data used were collected using an online survey and discrete choice experiment. Findings indicate that farmers prefer higher average prices, cash, check or electronic bank payment over cryptocurrency, and immediate payment upon product delivery over delayed payment. When choosing a contract, farmers viewed traditional text-based contracts and digital platforms with automated smart contracts equivalently, on average. On average, farmers showed no preference for providing and not providing traceability lot codes to buyers, and between choosing a contract and marketing their products as usual. Although we find that some farmers prefer to provide traceability lot codes to buyers while others do not, and some farmers prefer having a contract option while others do not. These insights could be useful to buyers and specialty crop farmers seeking to contract.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka vilka förändringar börsnoterade företag upplever efter konvertering till IFRS 15. Studiens vetenskapliga metod är kvalitativ forskning där datainsamlingen sker genom intervjuer. Studiens urval består av åtta respondenter från åtta olika börsnoterade företag. De utvalda respondenterna valdes på grund av sina kunskaper om IFRS 15 samt erfarenhet av FRS både före och efter implementeringen av IFRS 15. Vidare består den teoretiska referensramen av fyra organisatoriska förändringar i form av system och rapporteringssystem, interna kontroller, upplysningskrav samt kontraktsutformning. Uppsatsen har även institutionell teori som bas då den förklarar hur institutionella krafter influerar företag till att utföra förändringar. I studiens teori nämndes arbetsuppgifter som en indirekt påverkan på företag. I studien togs därmed med arbetsuppgifter som en femte förändring i den empiriska datainsamlingen. Resultat och slutsatser påvisar att majoriteten av respondenterna upplever förändring och merarbete gällande nya upplysningskrav enligt IFRS 15. Dessutom visar studien att en minoritet av respondenterna infört nya system samt interna kontroller efter konverteringen till IFRS 15. Med anledning av att samtliga företags nuvarande system och policys överensstämmer med IFRS 15, har majoriteten av respondenter upplevt att kontraktsutformning samt arbetsuppgifter förblivit oförändrade i samband med övergången till IFRS 15. / The purpose of this study is to investigate what changes listed companies experience after a transition to IFRS 15. The study's scientific method is of qualitative research where the data collection is made through interviews. The study's selection consists of eight respondents from eight different listed companies. The selected respondents were chosen because of their knowledge of IFRS 15 and experience with IFRS both before and after the implementation of IFRS 15. Furthermore, the theoretical reference framework consists of four organizational changes as in systems and reporting systems, internal controls, disclosure requirements and contract design. The study has also chosen institutional theory as the basis because it explains how institutional forces influence companies to make changes. In the theory of the study, work tasks were mentioned as an indirect impact on companies. The study therefore chose to include work tasks as a fifth change in the empirical data collection. Results and conclusions show that the majority of respondent’s experience change and additional work regarding new disclosure requirements according to IFRS 15. In addition, the study shows that a minority of respondents introduced new systems and internal controls after the transition to IFRS 15. Due to that all the companies' current systems and policies are consistent with IFRS 15, the majority of respondents’ have experienced that contract design and work tasks have remained unchanged after the transition to IFRS 15.