► We present two-stage Stackelberg game models. ► We investigate dynamics between the supply chain players’ profits. ► We explore varying levels of competition and consumers’ environmental awareness. ...► We study three supply chain network structures. ► We provide analytical results, numerical examples, and managerial implications.
This paper focuses on the impact of competition and consumers’ environmental awareness on key supply chain players. We consider both the production competition between partially substitutable products made by different manufacturers, and the competition between retail stores. We use two-stage Stackelberg game models to investigate the dynamics between the supply chain players given three supply chain network structures. We find that as consumers’ environmental awareness increases, retailers and manufacturers with superior eco-friendly operations will benefit; while the profitability of the inferior eco-friendly firm will tend to increase if the production competition level is low, and will tend to decrease if the production competition level is high. In addition, higher levels of retail competition may make manufacturers with inferior eco-friendly operations more likely to benefit from the increase of consumers’ environmental awareness. Moreover, as production competition intensifies, the profits of the retailers will always increase, while the profits of the manufacturers with inferior eco-friendly operations will always decrease. The profitability of the manufacturers with superior eco-friendly operations will also tend to decrease, unless consumers’ environmental awareness is high and the superior manufacturer has a significant cost advantage related to product environmental improvement.
This paper studies the impacts of foreign exchange risk and competition intensity on supply chain companies who are involved in offshore-outsourcing activities. In particular, we develop a ...variational inequality model that considers firms' decision-making regarding pricing, offshore outsourcing, transportation, and in-house production under competition and foreign exchange uncertainty. We also use a series of simulation examples to answer questions regarding outsourcing and pricing strategies of supply chain firms with different risk attitudes, and explore numerically their associated profits and incurred risks.
►We model the impacts of foreign exchange risk and competition intensity on supply chain companies that are involved in offshore-outsourcing activities. ►When the competition intensity increases, the exchange rate risks of both risk-neutral and risk-averse firms will increase. ►When exchange rate volatility increases, the average profit of the risk-neutral firm will first increase and then become stable, while the profit of the risk-averse firm will always decrease. ►As the exchange rate variability becomes higher the risk-averse firm will reduce its outsourcing activities while the risk-neutral firm may increase its outsourcing activities.
Although high efficiencies have been demonstrated in organic solar cells (OSCs), the development of semitransparent devices is still lagging behind due to the difficulty in making a balance between ...the active layer absorption and device transmittance. To address this challenge, a detailed study of semitransparent OSCs (ST-OSCs) based on the blends of the low bandgap polymer PTB7-Th and ultra-narrow bandgap nonfullerene acceptor IEICO-4F is carried out. Comprehensive optical modeling using the transfer matrix method (TMM) has been performed to assist the design of ST-OSCs and understand the effect of active layer composition and distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) on the device performance. By varying the PTB7-Th/IEICO-4F blending ratio from 1:1.5 to 1:3 and incorporating of DBRs, the average visible transmittance (AVT) of the ST-OSCs was dramatically increased by over 26% with a slight decrease in photocurrent (
J
max
) less than 5%. This significant improved light utilization can be attributed to the enhanced photon harvesting of NIR range and decreased visible light absorption by increasing the IEICO-4F content, as well as the optimal optical properties in the ST-OSCs with the use of DBRs. Our results can provide a feasible way to optimize the light harvesting and transmittance of the device for achieving high-performance ST-OSCs.
The inconsistent thermal quenching performance of manganese(II)-doped Cs
3
Cu
2
I
5
microparticles is exploited in a highly sensitive noninvasive optical thermometer. The ratio of the emissions of ...Cu(II) and Mn(II) ions in the microparticles is highly temperature dependent in the range from 298 to 498 K. The best absolute and relative sensitivities are 0.547 K
−1
and 0.525% K
−1
, respectively. The emission spectrum, under 300-nm photoexcitation, has emission peaks at 448 and 556 nm. This is the result of energy transfer between the Cu(II) and Mn(II) ions whose efficiency can reach up to 57% when the Mn(II) ion concentration is 2 mol%. The emission color of the microparticles changes from cyan to green when increasing the temperature from 298 to 498 K.
Graphical abstract
Synthesis of novel Mn(II)-doped Cs
3
Cu
2
I
5
thermochromic halides with admirable luminescent behaviors for high sensitive ratiometric thermometry and safety sign in high temperature environment.
Triplet excitons can be effectively harvested in organic light-emitting diodes employing thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) molecules as the emitter and host. A design strategy for blue ...and green emitters with small S1–T1 splitting (ΔE ST) is to construct a donor-acceptor (D-A) type molecule with moieties combining a high T1 level with a strong electron-donating/withdrawing character. Here, we report a new kind of TADF emitter with an indolo2,3-bindole (IDID) donor. In comparison to other reported indolocarbazole and indoloindole donors, IDID has a higher T1 level, which is comparable to that of the classical donor 9,9-dimethyl-9,10-dihydroacridine (DMAC) for blue TADF emitters. The sky-blue and green TADF emitters based on the IDID donor and a phenyltriazine acceptor exhibit high photoluminescence quantum yields (0.78–0.92) and short TADF lifetimes (1.1–1.7 μs) in doped films. Devices employing these IDID-based emitters offer an external quantum efficiency of 19.2%, which is comparable to that obtained for a device employing an analogous compound with a DMAC donor, while the stability of the former is higher than that of the latter owing to the just-right D-A twisting angles (∼59°) in the IDID-based emitters leading to a balance between ΔE ST and the fluorescence rate. The utilization of host materials with a similar polarity to the emitter is found to be an effective strategy to improve device stability.
► We model the effects of relationships on supply chain network profit and risks. ► Establishing and maintaining relationship level induces costs, but may lower risk. ► Higher relationship lowers ...supply chain uncertainty and prices while increasing transactions. ► The longest the relationship, the highest its impact to cost and risk reductions. ► The time and locations of investments in relationship determine how risky supply chain is.
In this paper, we analyze the effects of levels of social relationship on a multiperiod supply chain network with multiple decision-makers (suppliers, manufacturers, and retailers) associated at different tiers. The model incorporates the individual attitudes towards disruption and opportunism risks and allows us to investigate the interplay of the heterogeneous decision-makers and to compute the resultant network equilibrium pattern of production, transactions, prices, and levels of social relationship over the multiperiod planning horizon. In our analysis, we focus on the following questions: (1) how do the evolving relationships affect the profitability and risks of supply chain firms as well as the prices and demands of the product in the market? (2) how do the relationships with the upstream supply chain firms affect the relationships with the downstream firms, and how these relationships influence the profitability and risks of the supply chain firms? (3) how do the supply disruption risks interact with the opportunism risks through supply chain relationships, and how these risks influence the profitability of the firms? The results show that high levels of relationship can lead to lower supply chain overall cost, lower risk, lower prices, higher product transaction and therefore higher profit.
•This is the first research focusing on financial hedging of competing supply chain firms.•Our model considers both foreign exchange risk and commodity price risk.•We incorporate the basis risk, and ...investigate its impact on supply chain decisions and profits.•Our paper provides a flexible, realistic and powerful game-theoretical approach for real-world problems.
In this paper, we develop a network equilibrium model for supply chain networks with strategic financial hedging. We consider multiple competing firms that purchase multiple materials and parts to manufacture their products. The supply chain firms’ procurement activities are exposed to commodity price risk and exchange rate risk. The firms can use futures contracts to hedge the risks. Our research studies the equilibrium of the entire network where each firm optimizes its own operation and hedging decisions. We use variational inequality theory to formulate the equilibrium model, and provide qualitative properties. We provide analytical results for a special case with duopolistic competition, and use simulations to study an oligopolistic case. The analytical and simulation studies reveals interesting managerial insights.
This article develops a network equilibrium model that studies competing supply chain firms who can strategically invest in new capacity at suppliers under cost and demand uncertainty. We model the ...decision-making process of each supply chain firm as a stochastic optimization problem. We formulate the equilibrium conditions of all supply chain firms using the variational inequality theory. Analytical results establish connections from the supplier investment decisions to real put and call options. Option pricing theory is applied to show that the value of supplier capacity investment will increase if the demand uncertainty or the cost uncertainty increases, and will decrease if the price sensitivity or the cost factor increases. Numerical experiments are conducted to confirm and extend the analytical results, and to investigate the decision-making and profits of different supply chain firms in more complex and realistic settings. Our results also suggest that manufacturers should strategically invest in a portfolio of complementary suppliers with different risk characteristics that serve different purposes.
•We develop a supply chain network equilibrium model with supplier investments.•Our results connect real put and call options and supplier capacity investments.•The value of the investment increases as demand and cost uncertainty increases.•The value of the investment decreases as price sensitivity and cost increases.•Numerical experiments study the supplier capacity investment in complex networks.
In this paper, we develop a modeling and computational framework that allows for the determination of optimal carbon taxes applied to electric power plants in the context of electric power supply ...chain (generation/distribution/consumption) networks. The adoption of carbon/pollution taxes both internationally and regionally has been fueled by global climate change and fuel security risks, with a significant portion of such policy interventions directed at the electric power industry. The general framework that we develop allows for three distinct types of carbon taxation environmental policies, beginning with a completely decentralized scheme in which taxes can be applied to each individual power generator/power plant in order to guarantee that each assigned emission bound is not exceeded, to two versions of a centralized scheme, one which assumes a fixed bound over the entire electric power supply chain in terms of total carbon emissions and the other which allows the bound to be a function of the tax. The behavior of the various decision-makers in the electric power supply chain network is described, along with the three taxation schemes, and the governing equilibrium conditions, which are formulated as finite-dimensional variational inequality problems. Twelve numerical examples are presented in which the optimal carbon taxes, as well as the equilibrium electric power flows and demands, are computed. The numerical results demonstrate, as the theory predicts, that the carbon taxes achieve the desired goal, in that the imposed bounds on the carbon emissions are not exceeded. Moreover, they illustrate the spectrum of scenarios that can be explored in terms of changes in the bounds on the carbon emissions; changes in emission factors; changes in the demand price functions, etc.
In this paper we develop a network equilibrium model for optimal pricing and resource allocation in Computational Grid Network. We consider a general network economy model with Grid Resource ...Providers, Grid Resource Brokers and Grid Users. The proposed framework allows for the modeling and theoretical analysis of Computational Grid Markets that considers a non-cooperative behavior of decision-makers in the same tier of the grid computing network (such as, for example, Grid Resource Providers) as well as cooperative behavior between tiers (between Resource Providers and Grid Brokers). We introduce risk management into the decision making process by analyzing the decision-marker's reliability and quality of service (QoS) requirement. We analyze resource allocation patterns as well as equilibrium price based on demand, supply, and cost structure of the grid computing market network. We specifically answer the following questions with several numerical examples: How do system reliability levels affect the QoS levels of the service providers and brokers under competition? How do system reliability levels affect the profits of resource providers and brokers in a competitive market? How do system reliability levels influence the pricing of the services in a competitive environment? How do users' service request types, QoS requirements, and timing concerns affect users' behaviors, costs and risks in equilibrium? How does the market mechanism allocate resources to satisfy the demands of users? We find that for users who request same services certain timing flexibility can not only reduce the costs but also lower the risks. The results indicated that the value of QoS can be efficiently priced based on the heterogeneous service demands.
► We develop model for pricing and resource allocation in grid computing network. ► We introduce risk management into the decision making process. ► We analyze the effects of reliability and quality of service (QoS) on the grid. ► Users' services time flexibility can reduce the grid costs and risks. ► Results indicate that QoS can be priced based on heterogeneous service demands.
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