The paper introduces the business-based interorganizational information platform (IOP) and analyzes the feasibility and mechanism of business-based IOP governing global supply chains vulnerability, and then aims to develop a risk evaluation software under reliable algorithm to appraise the capability of an interorganizational information platform resisting to global supply chains risks that supports platform users and providers to make decisions. The paper respectively starts with a basic conceptual model of global supply chains vulnerability and a conceptual model of global supply chains vulnerability in business-based IOP, and then gives the simulation model of governance of global supply chain vulnerability in business-based IOP; then has a discussion with the beneficial model of governing global supply chains vulnerability by using business-based IOP or not. The results of research: (1) If given the ratio of expense per income on global supply chains using business-based IOP, we can estimate the costs to take precautions against risks that decides to the maximum value of the average income of per transaction on global supply chains using business-based IOP. (2) If given total income of transaction on global supply chains using business-based IOP, we can estimate the maximum value of the ratio of expense per income on global supply chains using business-based IOP, which would help to make pricing policy for IOP service provider.

This paper examines the yard truck scheduling, the yard location assignment for discharging containers, and the quay crane scheduling in container terminals. Taking into account the practical situation, we paid special attention to the loading and discharging precedence relationships between containers in the quay crane operations. A Mixed Integer Program (MIP) model is constructed, and a two-stage heuristic algorithm is proposed. In the first stage an Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm is employed to generate the yard location assignment for discharging containers. In the second stage, the integration of the yard truck scheduling and the quay crane scheduling is a flexible job shop problem, and an efficient greedy algorithm and a local search algorithm are proposed. Extensive numerical experiments are conducted to test the performance of the proposed algorithms.

Detection and clarification of cause-effect relationships among variables is an important problem in time series analysis. This paper provides a method that employs both mutual information and conditional mutual information to identify the causal structure of multivariate time series causal graphical models. A three-step procedure is developed to learn the contemporaneous and the lagged causal relationships of time series causal graphs. Contrary to conventional constraint-based algorithm, the proposed algorithm does not involve any special kinds of distribution and is nonparametric. These properties are especially appealing for inference of time series causal graphs when the prior knowledge about the data model is not available. Simulations and case analysis demonstrate the effectiveness of the method.

This paper employs the real option theory to develop a pricing model for the transfer of property rights. We list the conditions for the good, intermediate and bad firms respectively, and work out the closed-form solution to the equilibrium transfer price, the optimal transfer timing. Using the comparative static analysis, we find that for good firms the transfer price of the target is increasing in its capital. The higher the capital of the target owns, the faster it will be transferred. For intermediate and bad firms, similar conclusions can be derived. The larger gap between the acquirer’s size and market power and those of the target, the lower the transfer triggered price. The transfer price goes up as the capital ratio of the acquirer over the target diminishes, while it is decreasing in the amount of the capital the target owns.

This paper proposes a graphical-based methodology to evaluate the performance of a manufacturing system in terms of network model. We focus on a manufacturing system which consists of multiple distinct production lines. A transformation technique is developed to build the manufacturing system as a manufacturing network. In such a manufacturing network, the capacity of each machine is multistate due to failure, partial failure, or maintenance. Thus, this manufacturing network is also regarded as a multistate network. We evaluate the probability that the manufacturing network can meet a given demand, where the probability is referred to as the system reliability. A simple algorithm integrating decomposition technique is proposed to generate the minimal capacity vectors that machines should provide to eventually satisfy demand. The system reliability is derived in terms of such capacity vectors afterwards. A practical application in the context of IC card manufacturing system is utilized to demonstrate the performance evaluation procedure.

This paper examines the effect of government policies on the financing decisions of firms in China. A real options model is developed to understand how fiscal and monetary policies affect corporate leverage. The model predictions will be tested with a comprehensive panel data set spanning from 2002 to 2011. This work documents robust evidence that show the positive association of both tax and risk-free rate with firm leverage: increase in tax rate and risk free rate by one standard deviation results in the increase in corporate leverages by 0.61 to 1.06 percent and 2.54 to 3.68 percent, respectively. In addition, the productions of the firms are not affected by the tax rate in the short run, and the firms are operating in their optimal market leverage. The implied tax rate and risk free rate are solved by assuming that the firms achieve their optimal leverages. The implied tax rate declines with the size, whereas the opposite goes for implied risk-free rate.

In this study a new hybrid aggregation operator named as the generalized intuitionistic fuzzy hybrid Choquet averaging (GIFHCA) operator is defined. Meantime, some desirable properties are studied, and several important cases are examined. Furthermore, we define the generalized Shapley GIFHCA (GS-GIFHCA) operator, which does not only overall consider the importance of elements and their ordered positions, but also globally reflect the correlations among them and their ordered positions. In order to simplify the complexity of solving a fuzzy measure, we further define the generalized λ-Shapley GIFHCA (GΛS-GIFHCA) operator.