Blockchain in Additive Manufacturing and its Impact on Supply Chains

Additive manufacturing (AM) appears to be a particularly attractive use case for blockchain. This research combines inductive in‐depth interviews with the Delphi method to explore what potentials blockchain technology in AM creates, which adoption barriers firms need to overcome, and how supply chains will be affected by the integration of these two potentially disruptive technologies. The results suggest opportunities that are related to intellectual property (IP) rights management, the monitoring of printed parts throughout their lifecycle, process improvements, and data security. The most important barriers for blockchain adoption in AM are an absence of blockchain‐skilled specialists on the labor market, missing governance mechanisms, and a lack of firm‐internal technical expertise. By addressing important limitations of AM, blockchain is expected to improve the competitiveness of AM in parts’ production, catalyzing the trend toward more decentralized manufacturing resulting in more agile, resilient, and flexible supply chains and reduced logistics costs. Beyond that, blockchain‐based AM platforms are expected to enhance supply chain visibility, drive supply chain digitalization, support supply chain finance, and contribute to the emergence of shared factory systems.     

Human resource management practices and voluntary turnover: a study of internal workforce and external labor market contingencies

We tested relationships between employee quit rates and two bundles of human resource (HR) practices that reflect the different interests of the two parties involved in the employment relationship. To understand the boundary conditions for these effects, we examined an external contingency proposed to influence the exchange-based effects of HR practices on subsequent quit rates – the local industry-specific unemployment rate – and an internal contingency proposed to shape employees’ conceptualization of their exchange relationship – their employment status (i.e. full-time, part-time and temporary employment). Analyses of lagged data from over 200 Canadian establishments show that inducement HR practices (e.g. extensive benefits) and performance expectation HR practices (e.g. performance-based bonuses) had different effects on quit rates, and the former effect was moderated by unemployment rate. The effects of HR practices on quit rates did not differ between FT and PT employees, but a different pattern of main and interactive effects was found among temporary workers. These findings suggest that employees’ exchange-based decisions to leave may be less affected by the number of hours they expect to work each week, and more by the number of weeks they expect to work.     

Models for which the MLE and the conditional MLE coincide

The MLE, CMLE and MMLE coincide in a linear regression model with fixed individual effects. In this case, there is no incidental parameters problem and the MLE is consistent. The equivalence of these estimators is important because CMLE=MLE implies both the consistency of the MLE and the efficiency of the CMLE. In general, we cannot expect to find a CMLE or MMLE, since there may be no fixed-dimension sufficient statistic for the effects, nor an appropriate transformation of the data whose distribution does not depend on the effects. However, we show that the MLE, CMLE and MMLE do coincide in systems of seemingly unrelated regressions and in systems of simultaneous equations. We establish this result for systems in which (exogenous) variables in addition to (or other than) the intercept may have coefficients which vary over individuals, provided that the set of such variables is the same in every equation.The financial support of the National Science Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.     

SUPPLY CHAIN INFORMATION SHARING IN A VENDOR MANAGED INVENTORY PARTNERSHIP

Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) involves the vendor making the replenishment decision for products supplied to a customer based on various inventory and supply chain policies. Information sharing between supply chain members is required in VMI. Sometimes VMI decisions are delayed and/or the information shared is inaccurate. This research examines the effects of information delay and accuracy, and the sharing of sales and forecast information in a VMI environment facing stationary and nonstationary demand. The simulation experiments show the impact of information delay, information inaccuracy, and information sharing on a variety of performance measures, including inventory levels and fill rates.     

Fairness in the Mail and Opportunism in the Internet: A Newspaper Experiment on Ultimatum Bargaining

Abstract. On 11 May 2001, readers of the Berliner Zeitung were invited to participate in an ultimatum bargaining experiment played in the strategy vector mode: each participant chooses not only how much (s)he demands of the DM1,000 pie but also which of the nine possible offers of DM100, 200, …, 900 (s)he would accept or reject. In addition, participants were asked to predict the most frequent type of behavior. Three randomly selected proposer–responder pairs were rewarded according to the rules of ultimatum bargaining and three randomly chosen participants of those who predicted the most frequent type of behavior received a prize of DM500. Decisions could be submitted by mail, fax or via the internet. Behavior is described, statistically analyzed and compared to the usual laboratory ultimatum bargaining results.     

Playing safe in coordination games:: the roles of risk dominance, payoff dominance, and history of play

This paper presents results from a series of experiments designed to test the impact on subject behavior of changes in the risk dominance and payoff dominance characteristics of two player coordination games. The main finding is that changes in risk dominance significantly affect play of the subjects, whereas changes in the level of payoff dominance do not. Observed history of play also has an important influence on subject behavior, both when subjects are randomly rematched after each game and when they remain matched with the same individual for a sequence of games.     

Linear cumulative prospect theory with applications to portfolio selection and insurance demand

Abstract The present paper combines loss attitudes and linear utility by providing an axiomatic analysis of corresponding preferences in a cumulative prospect theory (CPT) framework. In a sense we derive a two-sided variant of Yaari’s dual theory, i.e., nonlinear probability weights in the presence of linear utility. The first important difference is that utility may have a kink at the status quo, which allows for the exhibition of loss aversion. Also, we may have different probability weighting functions for gains than for losses. We apply the model to both portfolio selection and insurance demand. Our results show that CPT with linear utility has more realistic implications than the dual theory since it implies only a weakened variant of plunging. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 91B08, 91B28, 91B30 Journal of Economic Literature Classification: D81, G11, G22