Analysis of the supply chain design and planning issues: Models and algorithms

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Finding Silver Linings in the Storm: An Evaluation of Recent Canada-US Crossborder Developments

Recently, a storm of activity has swirled around rules governing the tax treatment of Canada–US crossborder investment. The high degree of integration of the Canadian and US economies means that the effects of such tax changes can be significant. In a number of areas, however, undue restrictions on, or distortions of, crossborder investment remain, which could harm Canada’s economic interests.fiscal policy, border papers, Canada-US crossborder investment tax treatment

Taxation and Supplier Networks: Evidence from India

Do tax systems distort firm-to-firm trade? This paper considers the effect of tax policy on supplier networks in a large developing economy, the state of West Bengal in India. Using administrative panel data on firms, including transaction data for 4.8 million supplier-client pairs, we first document substantial segmentation of supply chains between firms paying Value-Added Taxes (VAT) and non-VAT-paying firms. We then develop a model of firms’ sourcing and tax decisions within supply chains to understand the mechanisms through which tax policy interacts with supply networks. The model predicts partial segmentation in equilibrium because of both supply-chain distortions (taxes affect how much firms trade with each other) and strategic complementarities in firms’ tax choices. Finally, we test the model’s predictions using variations over time within-firm and within supplier-client pairs. We find that the tax system distorts firms’ sourcing decisions, and suggestive evidence of strategic complementarities in firms’ tax choices within supplier networks

Countering Commodity Trade Mispricing in Low-Income Countries: A Prescriptive Approach

Commodity trade mispricing, especially the undervaluation of commodity exports, disproportionately harms low-income countries that depend on commodity exports for most of their export earnings. Such countries should (re)consider adopting rule-based pricing methods as a prescriptive alternative to transaction-based valuation systems. This article firmly grounds rule-based pricing in market parameters. It calls for a hybrid form of market-based price regulation in the framework of public–private models of supply chain governance, also integrating advice from independent experts. This article addresses this policy option within the parameters set by international law, considering state regulatory scope under international trade and tax law. It challenges the popular objection that prescriptive pricing methods breach international trade and tax rules. Instead, it emphasizes the complexity of any such legal assessment under international economic law

Managing Material and Financial Flows in Supply Chains

<p>This dissertation studies the integration of material and financial flows in supply chains, with the goal of examining the impact of cash flows on the individual firm's decision making and the overall supply chain efficiency. We develop analytical models to provide effective policy recommendations and derive managerial insights.</p><p>We first consider a credit-constrained firm that orders inventory to satisfy stochastic demand in a finite horizon. The firm provides trade credit to the customer and receives it from the supplier. A default penalty is incurred on the unfulfilled payment to the supplier. We utilize an accounting concept of working capital to obtain optimal and near-optimal inventory policies. The model enables us to suggest an acceptable purchasing price offered in the supplier's trade credit contract, and to demonstrate how liquidity provision can mitigate the bullwhip effect. We then study a joint inventory and cash management problem for a multi-divisional supply chain. We consider different levels of cash concentration: cash pooling and transfer pricing. We develop the optimal joint inventory replenishment and cash retention policy for the cash pooling model, and construct cost lower bounds for the transfer pricing model. The comparison between these two models shows the value of cash pooling, although a big portion of this benefit may be recovered through optimal transfer pricing schemes. Finally, we build a supply chain model to investigate the material flow variability without cash constraint. Our analytical results provide conditions under which the material bullwhip effect exists. These results can be extended to explain the similar effect when financial flows are involved. In sum, this dissertation demonstrates the importance of working capital and financial integration in supply chain management.</p>Dissertatio

Conference News: Business, Social Policy and Corporate Political Influence in Developing Countries

This document is part of a digital collection provided by the Martin P. Catherwood Library, ILR School, Cornell University, pertaining to the effects of globalization on the workplace worldwide. Special emphasis is placed on labor rights, working conditions, labor market changes, and union organizing.UNRISD_Conference_BusSocPolCorpPoliInfluence.pdf: 1114 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Charting Our Water Future: Economic Frameworks to Inform Decision-Making

This study focuses on how, by 2030, competing demands for scarce water resources can be met and sustained. It is sponsored, written, and supported by a group of private sector companies and institutions who are concerned about water scarcity as an increasing business risk, a major economic threat that cannot be ignored, and a global priority that affects human well-being. After careful quantitative analysis of the problem, this report provides some answers on the path to water resource security. It first quantifies the situation and shows that in many regions, current supply will be inadequate to meet the water requirements. However, as a central thesis, it also shows that meeting all competing demands for water is in fact possible at reasonable cost. This outcome will not emerge naturally from existing market dynamics, but will require a concerted effort by all stakeholders, the willingness to adopt a total resource view where water is seen as a key, cross-sectoral input for development and growth, a mix of technical approaches, and the courage to undertake and fund water sector reforms

Essays on Global Sourcing under Uncertainty

In this dissertation, we study the sourcing policies of global corporations and determine the key drivers of the procurement decisions under different types of uncertainties. The first essay explores the impact of exchange-rate and demand uncertainty on sourcing decisions of a multinational firm which engages in global sourcing through capacity reservation contracts. The focus of this essay is cost, which is known to be the main driver of global sourcing practices. We investigate the impact of cost uncertainty caused by exchange-rate fluctuations on procurement decisions, and identify the conditions that result in single and dual sourcing policies. Our analysis indicates that although cost is an order qualifier when exchange rate is considered deterministic, lower expected sourcing cost is neither necessary nor sufficient to source from a supplier under exchange-rate uncertainty. The second essay examines sourcing and pricing decisions of an agricultural processor encountering yield uncertainty of the agricultural input required for its offered specialty product and the price uncertainty of the competing commercial product. We show that uncertainty gives rise to a conservative sourcing policy which would never emerge in a deterministic setting. While both studies highlight the significant impact of uncertainty on the business decisions and performance, they demonstrate that the effect of uncertainty may take opposite directions contingent upon the business environment and the type of uncertainty. The operational environment studied in the first essay, provides an opportunity for the firm to benefit from exchange-rate fluctuations, whereas the variation in supply and the market price of the competing product are shown to diminish the firm’s expected profit in the agricultural setting studied in the second essay. Demonstrating the opposing behavior under different forms of uncertainty, this study recommends managers to think deeply about the impact of uncertainty on their businesses. It also provides various forms of prescriptions to mitigate risk and operate effectively under each uncertainty

Three essays on operations management : commodity market, sustainability, and globalization

textThis dissertation deals with three issues that are important to many firms, namely, volatile commodity prices, environmental regulations, and globalization. In the first essay I study the benefit and the coordination of inventory sharing when there are two existing channels for procurement, i.e., the spot and forward markets. I propose a method for sharing inventory such that the decentralized firms get the same benefit per unit of the sharing transactions regardless of whether the firm is borrowing or lending. The procurement cost gap between the centralized and decentralized cases is dramatically small by using this method. In the second essay, I analyze whether imposing carbon costs to retailers and consumers changes the supply chain design or social welfare. I consider three types of players who want to maximize different objectives and three kinds of competitive settings. Different from previous studies, I show that the supply chain design is changed significantly by imposing carbon costs especially when market competition is medium to high. In the third essay, I consider long-term / short-term strategies of multi-national corporations. For the long-term strategy, I show that the correlation between the exchange rate and the market demand in a foreign country affects plant location. For the short-term strategy, I show that manufacturers increase the inventory levels as the exchange rate of the country where the plant is located grows weaker. I confirm these results empirically using plant-level data of Korean multi-national corporations provided by the Export-Import Bank of Korea.Information, Risk, and Operations Management (IROM