Using social and economic incentives to discourage Chinese suppliers from product adulteration

The American public raised serious concerns about product safety in 2007, when the number of product recalls broke a new record. Following a temporary drop in 2008, both the number and retail value of recalled units have been increasing, despite various efforts exerted by government agencies and private companies to combat this trend. Currently, many countries—including China itself—are expressing serious concern over adulterated or unsafe food made or sold in China. What are the underlying reasons for some Chinese suppliers to adulterate product? When law enforcement is still weak in China, what can western manufacturers do to reduce the risk of product adulteration? To develop effective deterrence mechanisms, we first identify four underlying factors that create incentives for some Chinese suppliers to produce unsafe products. Then we propose ideas to discourage Chinese suppliers from producing adulterated products based on two underlying strategies: (1) creating economic incentives through contingent payments, and (2) creating a social incentive by threatening public exposure through the power of the Internet and social networking sites.     

Horseshoes, global supply chains, and an emerging Chinese threat: Creating remedies one idea at a time

The horseshoe shape offers a model from which the complex relationships currently linking most Chinese and United States supply chain partners can be productively visualized. Wielded metaphorically, the horseshoe also illustrates how a momentous global trend may be rising within many Chinese-American supply chains, and why that trend might impose serious threats against United States economic interests for years to come. Because the trend exists independent of almost all domestic firms’ potential responses, only rarely can an associated domestic threat be eliminated within a particular United States/Chinese supply chain. Most United States firms possess a critical capability that could diminish the force of the emerging Chinese threat: the ability to manage and execute key supply chain functions more creatively. As the horseshoe illustrates, many domestic firms may soon be compelled to become more creative. To address this need, a supply chain creativity matrix model is developed in this article. The model demonstrates how domestic supply chain firms can stimulate and identify superior ideas amongst their managerial and subordinate ranks, therefore expanding the firm's creative efficiency in the strategic execution of key supply chain functions. Those firms should be better able to defend themselves against these emerging Chinese threats.     

A STATE-SPACE PARTITIONING METHOD FOR PRICING HIGH-DIMENSIONAL AMERICAN-STYLE OPTIONS

The pricing of American-style options by simulation-based methods is an important but difficult task primarily due to the feature of early exercise, particularly for high-dimensional derivatives. In this paper, a bundling method based on quasi-Monte Carlo sequences is proposed to price high-dimensional American-style options. The proposed method substantially extends Tilley's bundling algorithm to higher-dimensional situations. By using low-discrepancy points, this approach partitions the state space and forms bundles. A dynamic programming algorithm is then applied to the bundles to estimate the continuation value of an American-style option. A convergence proof of the algorithm is provided. A variety of examples with up to 15 dimensions are investigated numerically and the algorithm is able to produce computationally efficient results with good accuracy.     

The Effectiveness of the Escrow Model: An Experimental Framework for Dynamic Online Environments

This article investigates the mechanism of an online escrow service (OES) in online consumer-to-consumer (C2C) auctions. We develop a discrete-event driven simulation model for the dynamics of an OES adoption in electronic markets that involves four types of agents: the strategic trader, the moral trader, the OES provider, and the law-enforcement agent. By applying the Monte Carlo method in computer-based simulations, we demonstrate that the OES business model can effectively block fraud attempts and promote security in online C2C auction markets. However, our findings reveal that the prevailing OES fee rates are not necessarily set at the profit maximization level. Meanwhile, the simulation results show that the legal mechanisms in electronic markets directly impact the profit of escrow services.     

资产价格产生非线性特征的内在原因分析——基于异质信念资产定价模型的蒙特卡罗法模拟

基于异质信念资产定价模型,运用蒙特卡罗模拟的方法产生异质信念下资产均衡价格的时间序列数据,并对其非线性特征进行相关检验。研究发现,该时间序列具有尖峰肥尾特征、波动率聚类现象和自相似特征,但没能捕捉到长期记忆现象。说明投资者的并质信念是资产价格产生非线性特征的重要内在原因。     

Meta-Analysis in Marketing when Studies Contain Multiple Measurements

Most meta-analyses in marketing contain studies which themselves contain multiple measurements of the focal effect. This paper compares alternative procedures to deal with multiple measurements through the analysis of synthetic data sets in a Monte Carlo study and a re-analysis of a published marketing data set. We show that the choice of procedure to deal with multiple measurements is by no means trivial and that it has implications for the results and for the validity of the generalizations derived from meta-analyses. Procedures that use the complete set of measurements outperform procedures that represent each study by a single value. The commonly used method of treating all measurements as independent performs reasonably well but is not preferable. We show that the optimal procedure to account for multiple measurements in meta-analysis explicitly deals with the nested error structure, i.e., at the measurement level and at the study level, which has not been practiced before in marketing meta-analyses.     

TRUE UPPER BOUNDS FOR BERMUDAN PRODUCTS VIA NON-NESTED MONTE CARLO

We present a generic non-nested Monte Carlo procedure for computing true upper bounds for Bermudan products, given an approximation of the Snell envelope. The pleonastic true stresses that, by construction, the estimator is biased above the Snell envelope. The key idea is a regression estimator for the Doob martingale part of the approximative Snell envelope, which preserves the martingale property. The so constructed martingale can be employed for computing tight dual upper bounds without nested simulation. In general, this martingale can also be used as a control variate for simulation of conditional expectations. In this context, we develop a variance reduced version of the nested primal-dual estimator. Numerical experiments indicate the efficiency of the proposed algorithms.     

实物期权评价方法及波动率全周期估算研究

在不确定性投资中,实物期权评价方法充分考虑了项目投资中的管理灵活性、不确定性和不可逆性,因而更能准确地评估项目投资的价值。项目建设期的现金流出和经营期可能出现的亏损使得现行波动率估算方法难以应用于项目评价中。在分析波动率性质的基础上,以净现值法为基础,应用蒙特卡洛原理,提出了在现金流随机变动条件下实物期权模型中基于全周期的波动率参数估算方法,该方法适用于项目投资且易于操作。     

QPSK相关检测系统蒙特卡罗仿真及其性能

根据蒙特卡罗仿真方法基本思想,分析了加性高斯噪声和单频干扰条件下的QPSK信号相位分布模型及其相关检测方法;讨论了加性噪声和单频干扰模型,建立了相关检测系统蒙特卡罗仿真模型,模型通过动态系统仿真软件SystemView的二次开发方法实现;进行了仿真电路设计与应用系统性能分析。     

信道估计偏差对空时编码的OFDM系统性能的影响

本文研究了采用空时编码的OFDM系统的性能,通过Monte Carlo仿真分析了系统性能和信道估计偏差对系统的影响。     

带漂移项的DF检验式中漂移项t统计量的分布特征研究

本文推导了带漂移项的DF检验式中漂移项的t统计量的极限分布,它们是Wiener过程的泛函。并用蒙特卡罗模拟方法给出该统计量的估计分布。该分布是双峰的,分布方差比t分布的大。依据模拟结果,估计出该分布的6个百分位数对样本容量的响应面函数,并给出带漂移项的DF检验式中漂移项是否为零的检验用表。     

专利实物期权定价的蒙特卡罗模拟方法及其改进技术

专利作为现代企业重要的无形资产,对企业募集发展资金、扩大收益回流、形成竞争优势发挥着巨大的作用,因此专利定价问题也成为现代企业管理决策中的重要内容.本文基于专利的实物期权特征,运用蒙特卡罗模拟方法对专利的实物期权定价问题进行研究与探讨.首先,分析探讨专利投资项目的决策过程及其实物期权特征;在此基础上,建立专利定价的实物期权蒙特卡罗模拟模型,并引入对偶变量技术用以提高蒙特卡罗模拟的效率;最后,以生物医药企业专利定价为例进行实证模拟.研究结论认为,引入适当方差减少技术的蒙特卡罗模拟则成为专利实物期权定价的一种有效的分析方法.     

机动目标自适应高斯模型与跟踪算法

提出了一种描述机动目标运动状态的自适应高斯模型,在这种模型中,机动目标的加速度被认为是具有非零均值、时间相关的随机过程,并假定其概率密度函数服从高斯分布。指出了机动目标运动模型的均值和方差与目标机动加速度最佳当前估计值之间的关系,在此基础上,提出了相应的自适应卡尔曼滤波算法。仿真结果表明,该算法对机动目标在不同机动方式下的位置、速度和加速度均有良好的跟踪效果,且所需计算量小。