1,884 research outputs found

    Vertical Integration and Market Structure

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    Contractual theories of vertical integration derive firm boundaries as an efficient response to market transaction costs. These theories predict a relationship between underlying features of transactions and observed integration decisions. There has been some progress in testing these predictions, but less progress in quantifying their importance. One difficulty is that empirical applications often must consider firm structure together with industry structure. Research in industrial organization frequently has adopted this perspective, emphasizing how scale and scope economies, and strategic considerations, influence patterns of industry integration. But this research has paid less attention to contractual or organizational details, so that these two major lines of research on vertical integration have proceeded in parallel with only rare intersection. We discuss the value of combining different viewpoints from organizational economics and industrial organization.

    The emergence of interactions as strategic entities in value chain networks

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    Purpose: The article analyses the interactions that are engaged in when specialist organisations collaborate in value chain networks. It aims to bridge the gap between existing theory and emerging practices and identify a conceptual foundation for future research and practical application. Interaction costs are described as including transaction costs plus the costs for exchanging ideas and information. Design/methodology/approach: The paper adopts a conceptual approach, and introduces the basic elements of an interaction theory based on past theory and current practices. Findings: In an increasingly global economy, reducing risks while maximizing returns for emerging business models are a key concern. The article puts forward the view that as interaction costs decrease, potential business partners have greater scope to interlink their business strategies and operations to co-create value. It discusses the nature of interactions and highlights three factors that are either reducing interaction costs or increasing the effectiveness or frequency of interactions, thus increasing their facility for business purposes: the convergence of technologies, the delineation of roles within value chain business networks, and the emergence of innovative interaction strategies among network participants. It concludes by emphasizing the importance of an interactions strategy through an analysis of IKEA’s business model from an interactions perspective. Originality/value: The paper provides the basis of an interactions framework for researchers and practitioners to analyse value adding activities and to develop strategies in value chain networks

    Edge Intelligence Simulator:a platform for simulating intelligent edge orchestration solutions

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    Abstract. To support the stringent requirements of the future intelligent and interactive applications, intelligence needs to become an essential part of the resource management in the edge environment. Developing intelligent orchestration solutions is a challenging and arduous task, where the evaluation and comparison of the proposed solution is a focal point. Simulation is commonly used to evaluate and compare proposed solutions. However, there does not currently exist openly available simulators that would have a specific focus on supporting the research on intelligent edge orchestration methods. This thesis presents a simulation platform called Edge Intelligence Simulator (EISim), the purpose of which is to facilitate the research on intelligent edge orchestration solutions. In its current form, the platform supports simulating deep reinforcement learning based solutions and different orchestration control topologies in scenarios related to task offloading and resource pricing on edge. The platform also includes additional tools for creating simulation environments, running simulations for agent training and evaluation, and plotting results. This thesis gives a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in edge and fog simulation, orchestration, offloading, and resource pricing, which provides a basis for the design of EISim. The methods and tools that form the foundation of the current EISim implementation are also presented, along with a detailed description of the EISim architecture, default implementations, use, and additional tools. Finally, EISim with its default implementations is validated and evaluated through a large-scale simulation study with 24 simulation scenarios. The results of the simulation study verify the end-to-end performance of EISim and show its capability to produce sensible results. The results also illustrate how EISim can help the researcher in controlling and monitoring the training of intelligent agents, as well as in evaluating solutions against different control topologies.ReunaĂ€lysimulaattori : alusta Ă€lykkĂ€iden reunalaskennan orkestrointiratkaisujen simulointiin. TiivistelmĂ€. ÄlykkĂ€iden ratkaisujen tĂ€ytyy tulla olennaiseksi osaksi reunaympĂ€ristön resurssien hallinnointia, jotta tulevaisuuden vuorovaikutteisten ja Ă€lykkĂ€iden sovellusten suoritusta voidaan tukea tasolla, joka tĂ€yttÀÀ sovellusten tiukat suoritusvaatimukset. ÄlykkĂ€iden orkestrointiratkaisujen kehitys on vaativa ja työlĂ€s prosessi, jonka keskiöön kuuluu olennaisesti menetelmien testaaminen ja vertailu muita menetelmiĂ€ vasten. Simulointia kĂ€ytetÀÀn tyypillisesti menetelmien arviointiin ja vertailuun, mutta tĂ€llĂ€ hetkellĂ€ ei ole avoimesti saatavilla simulaattoreita, jotka eritoten keskittyisivĂ€t tukemaan Ă€lykkĂ€iden reunaorkestrointiratkaisujen kehitystĂ€. TĂ€ssĂ€ opinnĂ€ytetyössĂ€ esitellÀÀn simulaatioalusta nimeltÀÀn Edge Intelligence Simulator (EISim; ReunaĂ€lysimulaattori), jonka tarkoitus on helpottaa Ă€lykkĂ€iden reunaorkestrointiratkaisujen tutkimusta. Nykymuodossaan se tukee vahvistusoppimispohjaisten ratkaisujen sekĂ€ erityyppisten orkestroinnin kontrollitopologioiden simulointia skenaarioissa, jotka liittyvĂ€t laskennan siirtoon ja resurssien hinnoitteluun reunaympĂ€ristössĂ€. Alustan mukana tulee myös lisĂ€työkaluja, joita voi kĂ€yttÀÀ simulaatioympĂ€ristöjen luomiseen, simulaatioiden ajamiseen agenttien koulutusta ja arviointia varten, sekĂ€ simulaatiotulosten visualisoimiseen. TĂ€mĂ€ opinnĂ€ytetyö sisĂ€ltÀÀ kattavan katsauksen reunaympĂ€ristön simuloinnin, reunaorkestroinnin, laskennan siirron ja resurssien hinnoittelun nykytilaan kirjallisuudessa, mikĂ€ tarjoaa kunnollisen lĂ€htökohdan EISimin toteutukselle. OpinnĂ€ytetyö esittelee menetelmĂ€t ja työkalut, joihin EISimin tĂ€mĂ€nhetkinen toteutus perustuu, sekĂ€ antaa yksityiskohtaisen kuvauksen EISimin arkkitehtuurista, oletustoteutuksista, kĂ€ytöstĂ€ ja lisĂ€työkaluista. EISimin validointia ja arviointia varten esitellÀÀn laaja simulaatiotutkimus, jossa EISimin oletustoteutuksia simuloidaan 24 simulaatioskenaariossa. Simulaatiotutkimuksen tulokset todentavat EISimin kokonaisvaltaisen toimintakyvyn, sekĂ€ osoittavat EISimin kyvyn tuottaa jĂ€rkeviĂ€ tuloksia. Tulokset myös havainnollistavat, miten EISim voi auttaa tutkijoita Ă€lykkĂ€iden agenttien koulutuksessa ja ratkaisujen arvioinnissa eri kontrollitopologioita vasten

    Tourism supply chain management : a new research agenda

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    2008-2009 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalAccepted ManuscriptPublishe

    Interactive bundle pricing strategy for online pharmacies

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    Online retail pharmacies usually price their products differently from traditional drugstores. Based on real-time consumer behaviors, this paper proposes a dynamic bundle pricing strategy to maximize the pharmacy's profit. Given free shipping thresholds and consumer budgets, we propose a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model and a heuristic to sequentially price customized bundles. We further conduct a numerical study using the data from a leading e-pharmacy in China. Our computational results indicate that the proposed model not only improves the e-pharmacy's profit by attracting more customers but noticeably contributes to consumer surplus. Through sensitivity analysis, our model is proved to be robust under various scenarios.</p

    Overview of Infrastructure Charging, part 4, IMPROVERAIL Project Deliverable 9, “Improved Data Background to Support Current and Future Infrastructure Charging Systems”

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    Improverail aims are to further support the establishment of railway infrastructure management in accordance with Directive 91/440, as well as the new railway infrastructure directives, by developing the necessary tools for modelling the management of railway infrastructure; by evaluating improved methods for capacity and resources management, which allow the improvement of the Life Cycle Costs (LCC) calculating methods, including elements related to vehicle - infrastructure interaction and external costs; and by improving data background in support of charging for use of railway infrastructure. To achieve these objectives, Improverail is organised along 8 workpackages, with specific objectives, responding to the requirements of the task 2.2.1/10 of the 2nd call made in the 5th RTD Framework Programme in December 1999.This part is the task 7.1 (Review of infrastructure charging systems) to the workpackage 7 (Analysis of the relation between infrastructure cost variation and diversity of infrastructure charging systems).Before explaining the economic characteristics of railway and his basic pricing principles, authors must specify the objectives of railways infrastructure charging.principle of pricing ; rail infrastructure charging ; public service obligation ; rail charging practice ; Europe ; Improverail

    Intermediation in Future Energy Markets: Innovative Product Design and Pricing

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    In order to mitigate the impacts of climate change, the international community envisages significant investments in electricity generation from renewable energy sources (RES). The integration of this decentralized and fluctuating type electricity generation poses several challenges to planning, operation, and economics of power systems. The established energy systems were originally designed for a centralized electricity generation that follows the uncontrolled but well predictable demand. However, for large shares of RES, relying only on the flexibility of the generation side would be economically inefficient. Furthermore, the environmental benefits of using RES would be depleted by additional carbon emissions from ramping highly flexible fossil-fueled power plants. An appealing alternative to facilitate the efficient integration of large shares of RES is to exploit the so far mainly passive demand side as an additional source of flexibility. The established centralized approaches can hardly handle the fine-grained and decentralized nature of demand side flexibility. Therefore, the intermediation between centralized control and decentralized demand will play a major role in future energy markets, which constitutes the overarching topic of this dissertation. Typically electricity generation from RES is capital-intensive but has near zero marginal costs. On this account, novel services need to be offered in order to transmit the right economic signals. To this end, the concept of the differentiable good electricity is refined in this dissertation. Embedded into the so-called energy service, characteristics such as temporal and spatial price differentiation or the risk of interruption can be specified to differentiate the so far homogeneous good. Based on the morphological design theory a framework for the notion of energy services is established and subsequently implemented as a decision support system. This supports a systematic and structured product development process to design innovative energy services. Such an innovative energy service is, e.g., the charging of electric vehicles in car parks, where prices are differentiated by job completion deadline. This allows the car park operator to control the aggregated load of all charging jobs to follow local RES generation. Based on this energy service the downstream activity of an intermediary is formally modeled as an optimization problem and evaluated by means of an empirical simulation experiment. The results provide insights on pricing policy and the value of demand side flexibility with regard to both the integration of local RES generation and operative profit optimization. In order to illustrate another innovative energy service the presented model is extended by the upstream activity of the intermediary. Household consumers are offered monetary incentives if they allow the intermediary to control their appliances. The results indicate the cost saving potential from demand side flexibility for the intermediary\u27s procurement of electricity. Beyond that, this model formulation constitutes the foundation for further examinations, e.g., to study the strategic behavior of intermediaries on real-time electricity markets that are prone to market power abuse due to low market liquidity
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