Yield Uncertainty and Strategic Formation of Supply Chain Networks

Victor Amelkin and Rakesh Vohra

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: How does supply uncertainty affect the structure of supply chain networks? To answer this question we consider a setting where retailers and suppliers must establish a costly relationship with each other prior to engaging in trade. Suppliers, with uncertain yield, announce wholesale prices, while retailers must decide which suppliers to link to based on their wholesale prices. Subsequently, retailers compete with each other in Cournot fashion to sell the acquired supply to consumers. We find that in equilibrium retailers concentrate their links among too few suppliers, i.e., there is insufficient diversification of the supply base. We find that either reduction of supply variance or increase of mean supply, increases a supplier's profit. However, these two ways of improving service have qualitatively different effects on welfare: improvement of the expected supply by a supplier makes everyone better off, whereas improvement of supply variance lowers consumer surplus.

Date: 2019-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.09943 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:1907.09943

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators (help@arxiv.org).