Transaction Risk Management in Online Auctions

The scenario of business sellers utilizing online auction markets to reach consumers and sell new products is becoming increasingly commonplace. We propose a class of risk management tools, loosely based on the concept of financial options, that can be employed by such sellers. We examine market conditions, and risk and option pricing scenarios where writing options is beneficial to sellers, and purchasing options is beneficial to buyers. We provide a framework to analyze the value proposition of options to potential buyers, option holder behavior implications on auction processes, and seller strategies to write and price options that maximize potential revenues. Preliminary results based on actual auction data suggest that options can provide significant benefits under certain conditions

Competition in the supply option market

This paper develops a multi-attribute competition model for procurement of short life cycle products. In such an environment, the buyer installs dedicated production capacity at the suppliers before the demand is realized. Final production orders are decided after demand materializes. Of course, the buyer is reluctant to bear all the capacity and inventory risk, and thus signs flexible contracts with several suppliers. We model the suppliers' offers as option contracts, where each supplier charges a reservation price per unit of capacity, and an execution price per unit of delivered supply. These two parameters illustrate the trade-off between total price and flexibility of the contract, and are both important to the buyer. We model the interaction between the suppliers and the buyer as a game in which the suppliers are the leaders and the buyer is the follower. Specifically, suppliers compete to provide supply capacity to the buyer and the buyer optimizes its expected profit by selecting one or more suppliers. We characterize the suppliers' equilibria in pure strategies for a class of customer demand distributions. In particular, we show that this type of interaction gives rise to cluster competition. That is, in equilibrium, suppliers tend to be clustered in small groups of two or three suppliers each, such that within the same group all suppliers use similar technologies and offer the same type of contract. Finally, we show that in equilibrium, the supply chain inefficiencies, i.e., the loss of profit due to competition, are in general at most 25% of the profit of a centralized supply chain, for a wide class of demand distributions.supplier portfolio; supplier competition;

Options Procurement Policy for Option Contracts with Supply and Spot Market Uncertainty

Supplier’s reliability is a major issue in procurement management. In this paper, we establish a decision making model from the perspective of the firm who will procure from the multiple suppliers and the spot markets. The suppliers are unreliable and provide different types of option-type supply contracts which should be made before demand realization, while the spot market can only be used after demand realization and has both the price and liquidity risks. We establish the optimal portfolio policies for the firm with conditions to find the qualified suppliers. By defining a new function which contains the demand risk, the supplier’s risk, and the liquidity risk, we find that the optimal policy is to allocate different curves of this function to different suppliers. We also study some special cases to derive some managerial insights. At last, we numerically study how the various risks affect the choice of suppliers and the value of the option contract

Combined Pricing and Portfolio Option Procurement

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90569/1/poms1255.pd

Competition in the Supply Option Market

This paper develops a multiattribute competition model for procurement of short life-cycle products. In such an environment, the buyer installs dedicated production capacity at the suppliers before demand is realized. Final production orders are decided after demand materializes. Of course, the buyer is reluctant to bear all the capacity and inventory risk, and thus signs flexible contracts with several suppliers. We model the suppliers' offers as option contracts, where each supplier charges a reservation price per unit of capacity and an execution price per unit of delivered supply. These two parameters illustrate the trade-off between total price and flexibility of a contract, which are both important to the buyer. We model the interaction between suppliers and the buyer as a game in which the suppliers are the leaders and the buyer is the follower. Specifically, suppliers compete to provide supply capacity to the buyer, and the buyer optimizes its expected profit by selecting one or more suppliers. We characterize the suppliers' equilibria in pure strategies for a class of customer demand distributions. In particular, we show that this type of interaction gives rise to cluster competition. That is, in equilibrium suppliers tend to be clustered in small groups of two or three suppliers each, such that within the same group all suppliers use similar technologies and offer the same type of contract. Finally, we show that in equilibrium, supply chain inefficiencies—i.e., the loss of profit due to competition—are at most 25% of the profit of a centralized supply chain.United States. Office of Naval Research (contract N00014-95-1-0232)United States. Office of Naval Research (contract N00014-01-1-0146)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (contract DMI-0085683)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (DMI-0245352)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (CMMI-0758069)Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Digital BusinessUniversity of Navarra. IESE Business School (CIIL International Center for Logistics Research

Supplier competition with option contracts for discrete blocks of capacity

When a firm faces an uncertain demand, it is common to procure supply using some type of option in addition to spot purchases. A typical version of this problem involves capacity being purchased in advance, with a separate payment made that applies only to the part of the capacity that is needed. We consider a discrete version of this problem in which competing suppliers choose a reservation price and an execution price for blocks of capacity, and the buyer, facing known distributions of demand and spot price, needs to decide which blocks to reserve. We show how to solve the buyer’s (combinatorial) problem efficiently and also show that suppliers can do no better than offer blocks at execution prices that match their costs, making profits only from the reservation part of their bids. Finally we show that in an equilibrium the buyer selects the welfare maximizing set of blocks

Competitive Bidding in Supply Chains

This thesis is primarily concerned with the competition between suppliers for a buyer’s procurement business with consideration of subcontracting, commitment and capacity reservation. Under the circumstance where suppliers face diseconomies of scale, it may be cost effective for a buyer to split an order across different suppliers. Even when the buyer chooses only one supplier, the winning supplier may subcontract part of the work to the others subsequently. Motivated by these observations, Chapter 2 studies a supplier bidding game where a buyer requests quotes from two competing suppliers. We consider two procurement scenarios: (1) Order Splitting where each supplier submits a function bid which specifies different payments for different quantities, and the buyer may split the order; (2) Single-Sourcing Commitment where the buyer commits to purchasing from only one supplier before suppliers submit their bids, and the winning supplier may subsequently subcontract with the losing one. The second and third papers investigate the competitive behaviour of suppliers with capacity reservation. To hedge against financial risks, the suppliers often require a buyer to reserve capacity in advance by paying an upfront fee. In Chapter 3, we consider a discrete version of this problem where competing suppliers each choose a reservation price and an execution price for blocks of capacity, and the buyer needs to decide which blocks to reserve. Chapter 4 studies a continuous version of the problem where we allow general cost functions. The suppliers compete by offering the price functions (for reservation and execution) and the buyer decides how much to reserve from each supplier. This thesis sheds light on how suppliers compete with each other by considering a variety of factors. We believe an in-depth look at the competitive behaviour of suppliers will deepen our understanding of a buyer’s procurement process, and hence helps a buyer make a better sourcing decision

Competitive Bidding in Supply Chains

This thesis is primarily concerned with the competition between suppliers for a buyer’s procurement business with consideration of subcontracting, commitment and capacity reservation. Under the circumstance where suppliers face diseconomies of scale, it may be cost effective for a buyer to split an order across different suppliers. Even when the buyer chooses only one supplier, the winning supplier may subcontract part of the work to the others subsequently. Motivated by these observations, Chapter 2 studies a supplier bidding game where a buyer requests quotes from two competing suppliers. We consider two procurement scenarios: (1) Order Splitting where each supplier submits a function bid which specifies different payments for different quantities, and the buyer may split the order; (2) Single-Sourcing Commitment where the buyer commits to purchasing from only one supplier before suppliers submit their bids, and the winning supplier may subsequently subcontract with the losing one. The second and third papers investigate the competitive behaviour of suppliers with capacity reservation. To hedge against financial risks, the suppliers often require a buyer to reserve capacity in advance by paying an upfront fee. In Chapter 3, we consider a discrete version of this problem where competing suppliers each choose a reservation price and an execution price for blocks of capacity, and the buyer needs to decide which blocks to reserve. Chapter 4 studies a continuous version of the problem where we allow general cost functions. The suppliers compete by offering the price functions (for reservation and execution) and the buyer decides how much to reserve from each supplier. This thesis sheds light on how suppliers compete with each other by considering a variety of factors. We believe an in-depth look at the competitive behaviour of suppliers will deepen our understanding of a buyer’s procurement process, and hence helps a buyer make a better sourcing decision

Der deutsche Strommarkt:Marktdesign und Anbieterverhalten

Diese Arbeit widmet sich der Diskussion um die Ausgestaltung des Marktdesigns auf Strommärkten, die aufgrund von Versorgungskrisen in einigen liberalisierten Strommärkten und der zunehmenden Intensität staatlicher Lenkungseingriffe seit einigen Jahren verstärkt in den Blickpunkt des wissenschaftlichen Interesses gerückt ist. Das übergeordnete Ziel besteht darin, ein vertieftes Verständnis für die Auswirkungen der konkreten Ausgestaltung der einzelnen Bausteine des Marktdesigns auf das Verhalten der Stromanbieter zu schaffen. Auf dieser Basis werden Ineffizienzen im aktuellen deutschen Strommarktdesign lokalisiert und geeignete Handlungsempfehlungen entwickelt.<br/