Abstract:Intertemporal price discrimination is widespread in markets. Many theoretical works have studied the motives and conditions of implementing intertemporal price discrimination. Based on the Salop model, the paper analyzes intertemporal price discrimination within a vertical differentiated duopoly competition market by constructing a model which distinguishes different consumers according to evaluation value and waiting cost. The results show that manufacturers in ‘intertemporal price discrimination ‘ game obtain more profits than those in ‘uniform pricing’ game under certain circumstances. Therefore, resale price maintenance not only helps manufacturers differentiate consumers, but also helps manufacturers implement intertemporal price dis-crimination which brings more profits while consumers suffer losses. The above conclusions are crucial complements to the existing theory, and may facilitate government antitrust practices.

Abstract:In this paper, an endogenous energy efficiency improvement (EEEI) mechanism is introduced into the Chinese economy-energy-environment integrated model, which is an extended version of the global integrated assessment model ( E3METL) . The impact of EEEI on the growth of CO2 emissions is explored by means of factorization, and the evolution of carbon reduction contributions of the corresponding influencing factor is examined in the presence of carbon controls. It is found that: 1) Both carbon intensity and energy intensity play a positive role in the growth of carbon emissions, while the per capital income and population factor negatively affects the carbon path; 2) In the early stages of carbon control, EEEI is the largest contributor to the cutting of CO2 emissions; the situation changes in the later stages, and the development of non-carbon technologies acts as the largest contributor instead. Thus, it is of great importance to master the dynamic laws and features of the evolution of carbon reduction factors. For example, the government should adjust the direction and intensity of its macro-driven policies in time; while enterprises have to determine their investment orientation of carbon-reducing technologies duly, so as to achieve their carbon reduction goals more cost-effectively.

Abstract:Multi-task outsourcing can help a customer enterprise make full use of its external resources. To improve efficiency of outsourcing, multi-task-oriented incentive contracts need to be designed to encourage the outsourcing firm to balance its effort and investment among the tasks. In this paper, a multi-task principal-agent model is constructed, with the outsourcing firm modeled as an agent with a mean-variance utility objective. Sensitivity analyses are exerted to probe into impact of the exogenous parameters on the incentive contract. Finally, application of the theoretical model is investigated in the three scenarios as follows: The two tasks are independent, substitutive and complementary. It shows that the optimal incentive coefficient of a certain task is jointly determined by the risk-averse coefficient of the outsourcing firm, the task-specific parameters, and as well correlation coefficient of the two tasks. Furthermore, with change of the properties peculiar to one task, the adjustment direction and size of incentive intensity of the other task are determined by the correlated nature and degree of correlation between the two tasks, respectively. Managerial insights are provided for the customer enterprise to strengthen the incentive management of multi-task-outsourcing, taking full advantage of various indices of the properties, especially of the correlation properties of the tasks.

Abstract:In this paper, a multi-product capacitated newsvendor model with stochastic demand is studied. Firstly, a multivariate Markovian demand model to forecast the demands of multiple products is constructed, and the relationships among the demands are measured by the model. Secondly, a capacitated newsboy model with multivariate Markovian demand is proposed, and then the solution of optimal ordering policy for multiple products is derived. At last, the properties of the optimal policy through the probability value and truncated probability of the expected demand state are discussed. With capacity constrains, the theoretical analysis shows that the optimal ordering quantity is a monotonic decreasing function with respect to the left truncated probability, and a monotonic increasing function with respect to the right truncated probability, but the probability value of the expected demand state has special dual effects on the optimal ordering quantity.

Abstract:This paper studies the effect of delay costs on the travelers’ parking strategy under the random distribution of curbside parking spaces. Travelers have to decide how long in advance they should depart to arrive at the destination and how far away from the destination they should start looking for an available parking space. Their costs include not only the ordinary travel costs, but also expected cruising costs and delay costs depending on the real-time distribution of curbside parking spaces. Then three parking strategies are defined according to their different possible states of the delays when traveler reaches his / her destination. The “never-early-arrival”strategy is proved to be irrational , while both the “early-park-early-arrival ”strategy and the“early-park-late-arrival”strategy may be the optimal choice under different conditions. Typically, the“early-park-late-arrival”strategy is optimal if the unit time penalty of early arrival is no less than that of late arrival. Numerical results support the analytical propositions.

Abstract:To illustrate IT value creation in business networks, the concept of inter-organizational information systems (IOS) governance is proposed, and a research model based on its antecedents and consequences is built. Through literature review and hierarchical confirmative factor analysis (HCFA), IOS governance is featured by dimensions of structure and process as structure integration and joint action. IOS assets and inter-firm communications are the main contingency factors from technical and organizational aspects respectively. Consequences are measured by cooperative performance. Using survey data from China, the transitive effect of IOS governance is tested and verified. Two-way interactions analysis reveals the dominating contingency in the governance decision making. Centralized or decentralized governance mode is applied to align with the cooperative patterns of exploitation or exploration. Through a hierarchical model and contingency analysis, the value creation mechanism of IOS governance is revealed. Our studies expand and enrich the research on IT governance in networks, and provide inspirations for practice.

Abstract:Encouraging employees to share tacit knowledge among organizations is critical to a firm’s success. Tacit knowledge propagates through direct contact among individuals. This process exhibits characteristics that are similar to those of spreading epidemic between individuals. The paper constructs a dynamics model of tacit knowledge transmission to describe the tacit knowledge spreading in two organizations with employee mobility applying the modeling thought of the infectious diseases transmission dynamic method. The paper also considers the introduction and departure of employees. A threshold that governs whether tacit knowledge can be shared among organizations exists. Numerical simulations are presented to support the aforementioned theoretical results. The paper confirms, from both theoretical and quantitative perspective, that encouraging employee mobility appropriately can effectively promote tacit knowledge sharing among employees between two organizations. Further, if employee mobility is unreasonable, it will play an inhibiting effect.

Abstract:Based on companies listed on the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) between October 2009 and June 2013, this paper investigates the relationship between venture capital investments (VCs) and firm performance, the channels through which VCs improve firm performance, and the effect of VC characteristics on firm performance. First, the empirical results show that VCs can improve firm performance, but such improvement only exists in the short term. Second, the empirical results show that such short-run performance improvements come from firms’ EBIT profit margin (PM) rather than from firms’ asset turnover (ATO). How-ever, in the long term, both decreasing from PM and ATO leads to poorer firm performances. Third, the results show that the more the VCs and the more the experience of VCs, the more significant improvement of firm performance. These empirical results show that VCs cannot provide more sustainable growth supports than money to firms.

Abstract:In order to consider simultaneously the interests of issuers and investors, and ensure the financing efficiency, this paper designs a share-putable ＆ callable CoCos ( “SPCCs”for short) . Firstly, the SPCCs is transformed into the composition of a long common contingent convertible bond, a long down-and-in put barrier option, and a short up-and-in call barrier option. Secondly, considering the bond’s path-dependent characteristic, this paper introduces the Jarrow-Turnbull model to determine the survival probability, and deduces a pricing model of SPCCs whose triggers are assigned with stock prices. Finally, the Co Cos issued by Credit Suisse in February 2011 are used for an empirical analysis, and the results show that: the SPCCs price is significantly negatively related with the trigger intensity growth of debt-to-equity swap; meanwhile, the volatility of the issuer’ s stock prices indirectly produces an influence on the SPCCs price, and the influence direction depends on the difference between increases in the CoCos and the decreases in the provision of the share-puttable ＆ callable with the volatility of issuer’s stock prices.

Abstract:The paper develops a turnover-decomposition model to extract unexpected trading volumes from trading activities, and uses it as the proxy of investors’ heterogeneous beliefs to explore the explanatory power on stock returns in Chinese stock markets. The results show that the stocks with a high (low) degree of heterogeneous beliefs have higher (lower) current stock prices and lower (higher) future returns. This difference is most obvious for small companies. While adding the heterogeneous beliefs factor into the CAPM and Fama-French three-factor model, the paper derives results which show that heterogeneous beliefs has significantly positive impacts on current stock returns and significant negative effects on future stock returns. The results re-main the same even if liquidity, momentum, and other factors are included into the CAPM and Fama-French three-factor model. If the ban on short-selling for subset of stocks is lifted, however, the heterogeneous beliefs do not have significant explanatory powers on the future return for the subset stocks. The results support the validity of Miller’s theory.