Speculative behaviors have burgeoned in various business settings whereby it is costly for consumers to purchase directly from sellers. This paper examines the values of two typical speculative behaviors, scalping and line-sitting, against a backdrop of markets with resale. We establish a two-stage model in which a monopolist seller sells an item (product or service) to consumers in the first stage, and the item can be traded on a resale platform in the second stage. Speculators have no interests in consumption but incur lower costs in purchasing and reselling processes than consumers. In the scalping model, they buy the item first and resell it later to make profits. In the line-sitting model, they earn incomes by serving as surrogates of consumers in purchasing. We first find whether the two phenomena emerge critically depends on the value of consumers’ entry cost. Our main results indicate that both speculative behaviors can bring benefits to the seller and resale platform by a demand expansion effect, although through different mechanisms. Under scalping, the entry of speculators as additional buyers always boosts demand in both stages, and achieves a win-win outcome for the seller and platform, although less consumers remain in the market and the resale price decreases. Under line-sitting, demand is enlarged and profits rise in both stages, only when consumers find purchasing directly more time- and money-consuming, because they need to pay an extra service fee to speculators. Moreover, the consumer population gets better off from the two speculative behaviors when their entry cost is relatively high. When both models emerge, scalping may be preferable to line-sitting for the seller, resale platform and consumers, if the cost advantage of speculators in resale transactions is more evident.

This paper studies the procurement management of carbon financial instruments and the production decisions for an emission-dependent remanufacturing firm under service requirements. In the presence of demand uncertainty, carbon emission options are introduced to hedge risks for the firm who purchases carbon financial instruments under a cap-flexible emission trading scheme (ETS) and then conducts remanufacturing. We develop three optimization models to determine the optimal remanufacturing quantity (procurement quantity of carbon financial instruments) maximizing the firm’s expected profit under three contracts: a pure wholesale price contract, a pure carbon option contract, and a portfolio contract. Through analyses and comparisons of optimal solutions, we demonstrate the values of introducing carbon options and committing to service levels for the firm. Compared with the other two pure contracts, the portfolio contract makes the firm better off. However, high service requirements may lead to a profit loss to the firm. We generalize to the cases when the yield rate is dependent on the quality of used products, when the yield is stochastic, and when carbon price performs volatility. Discussion of these extensions illuminates how the variability of used product quality, yield rate and carbon price influences the firm’s performances.

Facing the threat of market follower encroachment, this paper constructs game theoretical models based on different channel structures and market structures, investigates following manufacturer’s encroachment strategy and technology strategies, and discusses the impact of following manufacturer’s strategy on quality decisions. The results show that encroachment always improves consumer surplus by slashing prices when leading manufacturer adopts in-house R&D (IRD); otherwise, it results in lower consumer surplus with mild competition if leading manufacturer is at a technological disadvantage. Furthermore, the technology strategies of following manufacturer are related to their R&D capabilities. The superior one is outsourcing R&D (ORD) for the manufacturers when their R&D capability is weak, otherwise, IRD is optimal. In a word, the leading manufacturer always prefers IRD under certain conditions, while the following manufacturer always prefers ORD. In addition, encroachment restrains quality innovative motivation under fixed or quality-sensitive R&D costs, but can improve quality level when consumers have a higher reference dependency for quality; meanwhile, the following manufacturer adopting ORD is always beneficial to quality improvement.

We study a supply chain consisted of a supplier and both retailers, and the supplier sells a single product through a dominant retailer and a weak retailer. The aggressive bargaining behavior of the dominant retailer brings the supplier much concern and two feasible strategies are presented to respond to that: difference-setting wholesale pricing contract and integration with the weak retailer. We investigate the decisions of supply chain members under each solution and find that, compared to the traditional form, the supplier always benefits from announcing the difference-setting wholesale pricing contract for it not only raises the marginal wholesale profits of both channels but also reduces the market share of the dominant retailer, thus potentially weakening its channel power. In addition, we show that combining with the weak retailer is not a wise choice for suppliers when the dominant retailer with relatively little bargaining power enjoys a large market share. Finally, by comparing the equilibria of these two solutions, we find that the optimal choice for suppliers depends not only on the difference in market share but also on the dominant retailer’s bargaining power in the negotiation.

We solve a portfolio selection problem in which return predictability, risk predictability and transaction cost are incorporated. In the problem, both expected return, prediction error volatility, and transaction cost are time-varying. Our optimal strategy suggests trading partially toward a dynamic aim portfolio, which is a weighted average of expected future tangency portfolio and is highly influenced by the common fluctuation of prediction error volatility (CPE). When CPE is high, the investor would invest less and trade less frequently to avoid risk and transaction cost. Moreover, the investor trades more closely to the aim portfolio with a more persistent CPE signal. We also conduct an empirical analysis based on the commodities futures in Chinese market. The results reveal that by timing prediction error volatility, our strategy outperforms alternative strategies.