A Market-Based Environmental Policy Experiment in Chile

Despite the increasing interest in the use of emissions trading for pollution control, empirical evidence reduces to a few experiences in the US. This paper studies the “"emission-offsets trading program”" established since 1992 to control particulate in Santiago-Chile. While the program is doing well from an environmental perspective, thanks, in part, to the price-based introduction of natural gas, the market is poorly performing because of high transaction costs, uncertainty and low enforcement. However, the scarcity rents created by the allocation of grandfathered emission rights to incumbents have proved very effective for the completion of the emissions inventory.

The strategic integration of agile and lean supply

Lean supply is closely associated with enabling flow and the elimination of wasteful variation within the supply chain. However, lean operations depend on level scheduling and the growing need to accommodate variety and demand uncertainty has resulted in the emergence of the concept of agility. This paper explores the role of inventory and capacity in accommodating such variation and identifies how TRIZ separation principles and TOC tools may be combined in the integrated development of responsive and efficient supply chains. A detailed apparel industry case study is used to illustrate the application of these concepts and tools

Virtual transshipments and revenue-sharing contracts in supply chain management

This dissertation presents the use of virtual transshipments and revenue-sharing contracts for inventory control in a small scale supply chain. The main objective is to maximize the total profit in a centralized supply chain or maximize the supply chain\u27s profit while keeping the individual components\u27 incentives in a decentralized supply chain. First, a centralized supply chain with two capacitated manufacturing plants situated in two distinct geographical regions is considered. Normally, demand in each region is mostly satisfied by the local plant. However, if the local plant is understocked while the remote one is overstocked, some of the newly generated demand can be assigned to be served by the more remote plant. The sources of the above virtual lateral transshipments, unlike the ones involved in real lateral transshipments, do not need to have nonnegative inventory levels throughout the transshipment process. Besides the theoretical analysis for this centralized supply chain, a computational study is conducted in detail to illustrate the ability of virtual lateral transshipments to reduce the total cost. The impacts of the parameters (unit holding cost, production cost, goodwill cost, etc.) on the cost savings that can be achieved by using the transshipment option are also assessed. Then, a supply chain with one supplier and one retailer is considered where a revenue-sharing contract is adopted. In this revenue-sharing contract, the retailer may obtain the product from the supplier at a less-than-production-cost price, but in exchange, the retailer must share the revenue with the supplier at a pre-set revenuesharing rate. The objective is to maximize the overall supply chain\u27s total profit while upholding the individual components\u27 incentives. A two-stage Stackelberg game is used for the analysis. In this game, one player is the leader and the other one is the follower. The analysis reveals that the party who keeps more than half of the revenue should also be the leader of the Stackelberg game. Furthermore, the adoption of a revenue-sharing contract in a supply chain with two suppliers and one retailer under a limited amount of available funds is analyzed. Using the revenue-sharing contract, the retailer pays a transfer cost rate of the production cost per unit when he obtains the items from the suppliers, and shares the revenue with the suppliers at a pre-set revenue-sharing rate. The two suppliers have different transfer cost rates and revenue-sharing rates. The retailer will earn more profit per unit with a higher transfer cost rate. How the retailer orders items from the two suppliers to maximize his expected profit under limited available funds is analyzed next. Conditions are shown under which the optimal way the retailer orders items from the two suppliers exists

Fuzzy Interactive Approach for a Multi-objective Supplier Selection Problem under Robust Uncertainty

In this paper, the authors proposed a multi-objective Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model for supplier selection problems. The main aim of the system under the investigation is to plan the companies to supply goods to achieve financial benefit by minimizing the total costs and satisfying the customers with on-time delivery and minimizing rejected items. In this case, some restrictions such as multi-product and multi-period conditions, shortage inventory constraints, and discount circumstances simultaneously are considered. Despite these efforts, due to the uncertainty nature of the problem, some parameters are considering as uncertainty data. For this aim, applying robust counterparts for uncertain parameters plays an essential role in real-world applications of this case. It is concluded that the feasibility and optimality properties of the usual solutions of real-world LPs can be severely affected by small changes of the data and that the robust optimization (RO) methodology can be successfully used to overcome this phenomenon

How to spend $3.92 billion: stabilizing neighborhoods by addressing foreclosed and abandoned properties

The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 created the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), under which states, cities, and counties will receive a total of $3.92 billion to acquire, rehabilitate, demolish, and redevelop foreclosed and abandoned residential properties. These funds can stabilize hard-hit neighborhoods, putting them on the path to market recovery. This will only happen, however, if they are used in ways that are strategically targeted and sensitive to market conditions. This paper outlines 11 key principles that states, counties, and cities should follow as they plan for and use NSP funds.Housing and Economic Recovery Act; Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP); Foreclosure