Abstract:To combat the worsening traffic congestion and urban air pollution, more and more major cities in China are adopting automobile license quota systems to curb the growth of automobile ownerships. Market-based mechanisms (e.g., auction), non-market based mechanisms (e.g., lottery) and hybrids of the two are being used to distribute limited automobile licenses. This study empirically quantifies the social welfare and revenue consequences of the different automobile license quota systems by estimating external costs from automobile usage and consumers’ willingness-to-pay for an automobile license in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Nanjing. Our analysis finds that the lottery system exhibits the largest welfare loss while the auction system the smallest. There is significant heterogeneity in both external costs in automobile usage and consumers’ willingness-to-pay for an automobile license across these cities. Beijing’s lottery system forewent 13. 8 billion RMB in consumer surplus, and Shanghai’s auction system forewent 2. 86 billion RMB, relative to the optimal quota in 2012. A uniform price auction system would have generated (1- 20) billion RMB to each city, which can be used to finance local public transit system.

Abstract:As the competition among airports in China becomes increasingly intense, airports have to introduce new services to enhance their competitiveness. As a result, the market share of the airport may increase and the increment in market share would last for a long period which is usually called the cultivation period. Shortening the cultivation period is the key to improve the efficiency and the effectiveness of new services. To maximize the increment in the market share and minimize the cultivation period as well as operation cost, a multi-objective model is established to dynamically optimize the timetable of airport coach during the cultivation-period. By solving the model, the timetable on every time slice during the cultivation period and the curve describing the increment in the market share are obtained. The interaction between passengers’ airport choice and the timetable, as well as the dynamic relationship between the market share on the pre-order and follow-up time point is described explicitly in the model. Results indicate that the dynamic timetable could shorten the cultivation period of the new service and impel the market share to grow rapidly.

Abstract:The stochastic demand inventory routing problem (SDIRP) is a typical NP-hard problem. It is also the key to implementing vendor managed inventory (VMI) strategy, that is, to coordinate the inventory problem and distribution problem in a stochastic demand environment. This paper studies the SDIRP based on the Fixed Partition Policy (FPP). Under this policy, customers are partitioned according to the service regions they are in, and customers who are in the same service region are served simultaneously. In this paper, a modified C-W saving algorithm is designed to partition customers, taking into account the impact of partition policy on inventory costs and distribution costs. It is shown that the optimal inventory policy for individual service region is a (s,S) policy, whereas the inventory policy for customers in each service region is an order-up-to policy. Furthermore, this paper proposes an algorithm to solve SDIRP based on FPP. Finally, a numerical example is presented to confirm the efficiency and applicability of the proposed algorithm.

Abstract:The coexistence of moral hazard and adverse selection has limited the supply chain’s efficiency. A model is developed from the virtual-third party’s perspective for supply chains without core enterprises, based on the cooperation and competition among enterprises. Considering that the retailer has private information about his effort and that the manufacturer has private information about his cost, a bilateral incentive model is built to achieve both the incentive and coordination by using a quantity discount contract and AGV (d’ Aspremont and Gerard-Varet) mechanism. The result shows that three constraints (the balance, the incentive and the individual rationality constraint) could be satisfied and a steady transaction quantity in an integrated supply chain could be achieved by properly setting the parameter of profit adjustment. In other words, the contract proved in the paper can realize bilateral incentive and coordination simultaneously. At last, a numerical example is presented to assess the theory conclusions.

Abstract:Manufacturing firms are often faced with frequent price fluctuations of both raw materials and the final products. Therefore, it has become increasingly difficult for the firms to make proper procurement and production decisions. This paper studies the inventory and production decisions for a manufacturer who is faced with fluctuating material costs. A multi-period inventory and production decision model is developed based on the assumptions that the fluctuation of material costs follows the Markov process and the market demand for the final product is a price-dependent random variable. The optimal dynamic inventory and production policies are then analyzed. One unique feature of the model is that the manufacturer can sell raw materials. Meanwhile, the manufacturer has to make inventory decisions of the final product. It is shown that the optimal production and inventory decisions are of base-stock type. Furthermore, several structural properties are developed to further characterize the detailed policy structure. Extensive numerical studies verify the optimal policies and demonstrate how the model parameters affect the optimal decisions.

Abstract:This paper considers a continuous-review inventory system which applies zero-inventory-order (ZIO) replenishment policy and which is subject to supply disruption risk. The supplier’s available and disrupted durations are assumed to follow two independent exponential distributions. A risk-averse manager is likely to overweigh the probability that the supplier is unavailable when the inventory level reaches the reorder point. An inverse-S shaped weighting function is used to describe the manager’s risk-aversion behavior. The supplier’s state transition process is modeled by a two-state continuous-time Markov chain, and the long-run average cost function is constructed according to renewal reward theorems. It is proved that the negative cost function is a unimodal function and that there exists a uniquely optimal inventory order quantity. An approximation method along with an upper bound of the approximated cost function error is proposed which can give the analytic expression for the optimal order quantity. Numerical studies are presented to investigate the biases on optimal order quantities and system costs between risk-averse and risk-neutral managers. Also, with a sample size of 160 benchmark sets and 1 000 random sets, the validity of approximation method is illustrated.

Abstract:This paper constructs two stochastic growth models of family capital with and without insurance mechanisms respectively, defines the probability of falling into the poverty trap, and computes it numerically by giving specific parameters of the random distribution. This paper analyzes whether insurance can help families get rid of the poverty trap caused by major emergencies with the methods proposed. The result of the research shows that after covering insurance, the probability of falling into the poverty trap is determined by two main effects: the effect of increasing capital and the effect of insurance compensation. Richer families can reduce the probability of falling into the poverty trap by covering insurance, and the higher the insurance proportion is, the smaller the probability will be. The probability of falling into the poverty trap of poorer families after covering insurance is ambiguous. Whether the probability will reduce depends on the sensitive coefficient of the critical capital for the premium rates. The probability of falling into the trap for both wealthier families and poorer families will decrease with the decline of additional premium coefficient.

Abstract:Leadership effectiveness is viewed as a means of improving employee creativity, while less researches explain the mechanism between authentic leadership and employee creativity. From a Self-determination theory perspective, the paper develops a model explaining how authentic leadership affects employee creativity. Sampling 532 employees and 89 of their supervisors from two large-sized private enterprise groups, the paper tests the mediation and moderation of work passion and power distance in the relationship between authentic leadership and employee creativity by a mediated moderation model. The findings show that: 1) authentic leadership has significantly positive effects on both work passion and employee creativity; 2) work passion offers a total mediating effect between authentic leadership and employee creativity; 3) the higher the perception of power distance felt by employees, the stronger the positive effect of authentic leadership on work passion, and the more significant the subsequent fostering effect on employee creativity.

Abstract:Using 2011 China Household Finance Survey (CHFS) data, this paper investigates the effects of Guanxi on households’ commercial insurance purchasing and insurance compensations. It is found that as Guanxi index increases by 1%, the probability of purchasing commercial insurance increases by 0. 3% approximately, and the probability of receiving insurance compensation increases by 0. 06%. In addition, the four Guanxi sub-indices have different influences on households’ insurance purchasing behavior. Moreover, Guanxi mainly affects the purchasing of life and property insurance rather than pension and health insurance. Finally, it is found that Guanxi can influence households’ insurance purchasing and compensation through the social interaction channel.

Abstract:In the Swap contract framework, the paper adopts the model-free method to extract the variance risk price and skewness risk price, and analyzes the time series characteristics, term structure, pricing and information content of implied risk prices. It uses S＆P500 index options to find that: First, the variance risk price is significantly negative while the skewness risk price is positive and the conclusions hold in multiple contract maturities; Second, the variance risk price and skewness risk price have different level factors and convexities but common slope factors; Third, the variance risk price and skewness risk price cannot be explained by the size factor (SMB), book-value or market value ratio (HML). Momentum factor or macro factors, while the market excess return has a partial explanatory ability, and implied risk price can be priced in the cross-sectional difference of stock returns significantly; Forth, implied variance and implied skewness can predict both realized variance and skewness instead of unbiased expectation; Fifth, the correlation coefficient between the variance risk price and skewness risk price is - 0. 86, implying the influence of common risk-driven factor; Sixth, with reference to the theoretical deduction of Bakshi ＆ Madan (2006) , the paper estimates the risk aversion coefficient to be about 4 ～ 6, as might be useful for related future research on risk attitudes.