This article, we develop an optimal policy to control the service rate of a discrete time queueing-inventory system with finite buffer. The customers arrive according to a Bernoulli process and the service time for the customers are geometric. Whenever the buffer size attains its maximum, any arriving new customers are considered to be lost. The customers are served one by one according to FCFS rule and each customers request random number of items. The inventory is replenished according to a (s, Q) inventory policy with geometric lead time. The main objectives of this article are to determine the service rates to be employed at each slot so that the long run expected cost rate is minimized for fixed inventory level and fixed buffer size and to minimize the expected waiting time for a fixed inventory level and fixed buffer size. The problems are modelled as Markov decision problem. We establish the existence of a stationary policy and employ linear programming method to find the optimal service rates. We provide some numerical examples to illustrate the behaviour of the model.

This paper examines the optimal forecast-sharing strategy in a hybrid-format online platform supply chain where a supplier sells a product through agency format and reselling format provided by a platform retailer who possesses demand forecasts from two channels. Forecast asymmetry and co-opetitive relationship arise between the platform retailer and the supplier, which affect their operational decisions and the supply chain’s performance. To improve supply chain efficiency, we compare different forecast-sharing strategies (i.e., no forecast sharing, sharing a single forecast, and sharing two forecasts), and analyze the effects of co-opetitive parameters on the optimal forecast-sharing strategy. Our analysis shows that forecast sharing is always beneficial to the supplier, and sharing two forecasts is more beneficial than sharing a single forecast. Whereas for the platform retailer and the whole supply chain, forecast sharing is beneficial only under certain conditions, depending on the co-opetitive parameters. The optimal forecast-sharing strategy is the result of a combination of the negative effect of double marginalization in reselling channel and the positive effect of responding pricing to demand uncertainty in agency channel. We illustrate the parameter regions of the platform retailer’s voluntary sharing, contract sharing, and no sharing, and also find that higher channel competition intensity, higher market share of agency channel, and higher commission rate can promote the platform retailer’s voluntary sharing. Our study extends the research scope of demand forecast-sharing and sheds light on the decision-making processes for managing a hybrid-format online platform supply chain.

Equilibrium pricing of credit default swaps (CDS) promotes efficient identification of credit risk in the market, which in turn leads to efficient allocation of resources. However, even when CDS have been priced in equilibrium, i.e., when premiums are equal to anticipated payments, the moral hazard incentives of CDS buyers increase with CDS transactions. Consequentially, it becomes an interesting research direction to study the impact of moral hazard incentives on the trading mechanism or pricing of derivatives (CDS). Most of the existing literature on the impact of moral hazard incentives in CDS pricing on derivatives trading mechanisms takes a macro perspective and focuses on the agreement risk effect. The literature exploring the analysis of the impact of moral hazard on the probability of agreement default from a micro perspective is not yet available. With this in mind, this paper focuses on the mechanisms by which “fraud”, an extreme manifestation of micro-moral hazard incentives, affects the probability of default. This paper introduces for the first time the concept of “claiming fraud” by credit protection buyers, which is different from the macro perspective of moral hazard incentives, and thus defines a specific extreme form of moral hazard incentives. Meanwhile, to address the intrinsic feature of the lack of economic explanatory power of the reduce-form model, this paper introduces a moral hazard incentive factor into the reduce-form model, and proposes a moral hazard state variable as a function of the asset value of the reference entity, which gives the reduce-form model strong economic explanatory power, and the default predictability is reduced by the description of the reduce-form model. In terms of the object of study, this paper considers the issue of moral hazard incentives in the presence of claiming fraud in two reference entities to further explore the impact of moral hazard incentives on default protection at the micro level in terms of cyclic default. Finally, based on the analysis of the results of the numerical simulation experiments, it is proposed that increasing the number of reference assets for CDS buyers will help to reduce the moral hazard incentives of the buyer, and thus the anticipated payments to the buyer, i.e., we attempt to endogenize the credit risk of an asset by allowing the asset holder to choose the probability of the asset going up or down, which helps to understand the phenomenon of moral hazard incentives in CDS trading.

In the growing e-commerce industry, the problem of malicious business operations has become increasingly prominent, exposing many problems such as weak supervision of e-commerce platforms and no way for consumers to complain. In order to solve the problems of counterfeit and shoddy products on e-commerce platforms and promote the sustainable development of the e-commerce industry in China, this paper constructs a three-party evolutionary game model of e-commerce platforms, merchants, and consumers, investigates the influence of each influencing factor on each party’s strategy choice, and provides targeted suggestions to e-commerce platforms based on relevant factors. Finally, the impact of several important parameters on the equilibrium solution is discussed through sensitivity analysis. The results show that: 1) the smaller the cost difference between active and negative regulation, the more the e-commerce platform tends to active regulation strategy, but increasing fines for dishonest merchants and consumer complaints have little impact on the e-commerce platform; 2) increasing consumer compensation, creating an honest business environment, and reducing the cost of honest business all help companies tend to operate in good faith; 3) the only factor that affects the tendency of consumer complaint strategies is the cost of complaints. The loss suffered by silence and the compensation given to consumers have little effect on consumers’ tendency to complain strategy. The results can provide theoretical guidance for participants to make useful strategic decisions in the e-commerce market.

This paper considers the supplier investment decision-making problem in a supply chain consisting of an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), a global supplier, and a local supplier. To reduce dependence on global suppliers and improve supply stability, we develop a differential game model to investigate the optimal investment decisions of the OEM towards the local supplier under different risk scenarios and the impact of different risks on the optimal decisions. The results show that investment efficiency and risks have a significant impact on OEM investment decisions. Specifically, when the OEM has higher investment efficiency, investing in the local supplier is profitable for the OEM; conversely, when the investment efficiency of the OEM is lower, it does not invest. In addition, an increase in the supply risk of the global supplier will lower the entry threshold for OEM investment, but an increase in the supply risk of the local supplier and the reputational risk of both will increase this threshold, meaning that only the OEM with significantly higher investment efficiency can profit.