Incentive contract design for food retailers to reduce food deserts in the US

In the US, obesity affects over 37% of the adult population and over 16% of the child and adolescent population. Although not-for-profit agencies cannot directly control what a person eats, they can influence the supply side of the obesity epidemic by incentivizing food retailers to open stores in regions of the US where food deserts exist. An incentive contract design dependent upon performance and resulting health benefit is presented for food retailers to reduce food deserts in the US. A principal-agent framework is used to capture the competing interests and moral hazard from the contracting mechanism. Optimization models are developed to determine the most effective and equitable resource allocations from the initiative given a target reduction in obesity rate or a set budget, while determining the optimal subsidy these agencies should offer to food retailers to incentivize operation in certain counties. These subsidies are designed to create financially viable conditions for food retailers to offer high quality, healthy food alternatives. The impact of retailer location on obesity is based on estimates of marginal effect on obesity rate. Given an example initiative in metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia and surrounding counties, the overall county-wide obesity rate would decrease by 1.17% with a fixed budget of $400M. Sensitivity analysis on the reduction in obesity is performed for varying total budget amounts. This incentive contract design strategy is a positive step toward ensuring that the underserved US population has better access to healthy foods while helping solve the obesity epidemic.     

Estimating substitution elasticities with the Fourier cost function: Some Monte Carlo results

The Fourier flexible form possesses desirable asymptotic properties that are not shared by other flexible forms such as the translog, generalized Leontief, and generalized Box-Cox. One of them is that an elasticity of substitution can be estimated with negligible bias in sufficiently large samples regardless of what the true form actually is, save that it be smooth enough. This article reports the results of an experiment designed to determine whether or not this property obtains in samples of the sizes customarily encountered in practice. A three-input, homothetic version of the generalized Box-Cox cost function was used to generate technologies that were oriented in a two-dimensional design space according to a central composite rotatable design; the two factors of the design were the Box-Cox parameter and a measure of the dispersion of the substitution matrix. The Fourier cost function was used to estimate the substitution elasticities at each design point, and the bias at each point was estimated using the Monte Carlo method. A response surface over the entire design space was fitted to these estimates. An examination of the surface reveals that the bias is small over the entire design space. Roughly speaking, the estimates of elasticities of substitution are unbiased to three significant digits using the Fourier flexible form no matter what the true technology. Our conclusion is that the small bias property of the Fourier form does obtain in samples of reasonable size; this claim must be tampered by the usual caveats associated with inductive inference.     

Evaluating food retailing efficiency: the role of information technology

Information and internet-based technologies have fostered new supply chain initiatives in food retailing but little research has evaluated performance and efficiency impacts. A distance function based on three key performance measures for food retailers is used to evaluate store performance and efficiency. The effects of store format, membership in a chain, unionization, and the adoption of a variety of information technologies. Supply chain technologies are groups into three general categories including data sharing technologies, decision sharing technologies, and technologies that support product assortment, pricing, and merchandising decisions.      

社区零售业的物流配送模式选择

调查发现,社区零售企业在物流配送环节效率低下增加了经营成本.基于社区零售企业的现状,本文探讨了不同规模的社区零售企业如何选择适合自身的物流配送模式.     

The geography of suppliers and retailers

In the last decades, supply chains have increasingly transcended national boundaries developing into global supply chains. Along with the many opportunities arising from international sourcing and the extended commercial presence over the world, the management of a globally dispersed supply chain is highly complex. A key issue to consider when dealing with the global supply chain design is the location of facilities, not only with respect to firms' owned facilities but also the supply and distribution side as factors that affect supply chain complexity and operational performance. This paper sets out a methodological framework to characterize the geographical configuration of a firm's suppliers and retailer networks. Quantitative indexes of network spatial concentration and relative proximity measures based on a nonparametric kernel density estimator are developed to identify both intra- and inter-firm patterns between the supply and point of sales' distributions. The method is first described by means of a series of theoretical-illustrative examples and exemplified by analyzing the geographical dispersion of four practical cases from the fashion-textile industry (i.e., Adidas, Benetton, C&A, and Puma). Subsequently, managerial implications and potential use of the metrics are discussed, showing how the proposed approach can support researchers and practitioners to improve supply chain location decisions and logistic integration, and evaluate changes in either the purchasing or distribution strategy.     

Evaluating treatment protocols using data combination

In real life, individuals are often assigned to binary treatments according to existing treatment protocols. Such protocols, when designed with “taste-based” motives, would be productively inefficient in that the expected returns to treatment for a marginal treatment recipient would vary across covariates and be larger for discriminated groups. This cannot be directly tested if assignment is based on more covariates than the researcher observes, because then the marginal treatment recipient is not identified. We present (i) a partial identification approach to detecting such inefficiency which is robust to selection on unobservables and (ii) a novel way of point-identifying the necessary counterfactual distributions by combining observational datasets with experimental estimates. These methods can also be used to (partially) infer risk-preferences which may rationalize the observed treatment allocations. Specifically, existing healthcare datasets can be analyzed with the proposed tools to test the allocational efficiency of medical treatments. Using our methodology on data from the Coronary Artery Surgery Study in the US, which combined experimental and observational components, we find that after controlling for age, smokers in the observational dataset had to overcome a higher threshold of expected survival relative to nonsmokers in order to qualify for surgery.     

Different orders of one-sided scale elasticities in multi-output production

In this paper we explore properties of different orders of one-sided scale elasticities in multi-input multi-output production using the theoretical framework developed by Hadjicostas and Soteriou (Eur J Oper Res 168:425–449, 2006), Krivonozhko et al. (J Oper Res Soc 55:1049–1058, 2004), and others. That framework includes as a special case the well-known operations research method of data envelopment analysis (DEA). A special case of the theory in this paper is the Banker-Morey (Oper Res 34:513–521, 1986a) DEA model for data that include both discretionary and non-discretionary inputs and outputs. Several inequalities among different orders of one-sided scale elasticities are presented. An example is used to illustrate many of the results and ideas of the paper. Finally, we show how the theory and results of this paper can be used to shed some light on implicit Hicks input technical change.     

世界第二大连锁零售商的经营招牌

如今,法国零售巨头家乐福是仅次于美国沃尔玛的世界第二大零售商。截至2003年3月,家乐福已在31个国家建立     

Quantile-regression estimates of cigarette demand elasticities for the United States

Using a simple model and state-level cross-section U.S. data from 1993 to 1999, quantile-regression estimates of price elasticity and income elasticity for cigarette demand are obtained. It is noted that price elasticity shows a sizable variation across the high and low quantity-quartiles. There is a similar variability in the income elasticity, but most of these estimates lack statistical significance. Besides providing an indication of the variation in the price (and income) elasticity for different consumption levels, the exercise suggests some interpretative caution in regard to estimates from constant-elasticity models.     

Estimation of demand elasticities: A reflection on the issues

The general nature of demand and the notion of the elasticity of demand are the issues of concern. Whether the requisite conditions from demand theory are closely enough satisfied when estimating the demand for energy is problematical. Consequently, the meaning of such estimates is subject to debate.     

拣货标签系统在零售连锁行业的应用

拣货标签系统具有差错率低、拣选效率高的突出特点,能够较好地满足零售行业配送中心的拣选作业要求.     

Evaluating probabilistic forecasts of extremes using continuous ranked probability score distributions

Verifying probabilistic forecasts for extreme events is a highly active research area because popular media and public opinions are naturally focused on extreme events, and biased conclusions are readily made. In this context, classical verification methods tailored for extreme events, such as thresholded and weighted scoring rules, have undesirable properties that cannot be mitigated, and the well-known continuous ranked probability score (CRPS) is no exception.In this paper, we define a formal framework for assessing the behavior of forecast evaluation procedures with respect to extreme events, which we use to demonstrate that assessment based on the expectation of a proper score is not suitable for extremes. Alternatively, we propose studying the properties of the CRPS as a random variable by using extreme value theory to address extreme event verification. An index is introduced to compare calibrated forecasts, which summarizes the ability of probabilistic forecasts for predicting extremes. The strengths and limitations of this method are discussed using both theoretical arguments and simulations.     

我国零售业如何应对跨国公司国际一体化扩张战略

实施"走出去"战略 如今经济界流行这样一句名言:"与其被国际化,不如自己去国际化."如果说20世纪是跨国零售公司主导全球零售业经济的时代,那么21世纪将是跨国零售公司主宰全球零售业经济的世纪.跨国公司通过"投资、收购、控股、兼并、联合、品牌输出"等形式掀起一浪高过一浪的国际化浪潮正以惊人速度裹挟越来越多的企业成为自己的"附属地",鲸吞越来越多的零售业市场.以沃尔玛、家乐福、麦德龙为首的跨国零售业巨头控制全球58%的零售市场,控制行业标准、核心技术和商业模式,并在很大程度上决定竞争的游戏规则和发展形势.因此,哪一天任何一个零售企业都有被"国际化的危险".     

Calculation of scale elasticities in DEA models: direct and indirect approaches

The qualitative characterisation of returns to scale in DEA has been a research issue the last decade. However, quantitative information provides the ultimate information. This paper presents two ways of obtaining numerical values of scale elasticity by an indirect approach using efficiency scores and dual variables for radial projections of inefficient points to the frontier, and a direct approach that is more general and powerful and directly evaluates numerically scale elasticity at any point on the DEA surface along intersections with planes. The direct and indirect approaches are compared using real data and a very high correspondence is found.     

Evaluating and tracking qualitative content coder performance using item response theory

Content analysis of traditional and social media has a central role in investigating features of media content, measuring media exposure, and calculation of media effects. The reliability of content coding is usually evaluated using “kappa-centric” agreement measures, but these measures produce results that aggregate individual coder decisions which obscure the performance of individual coders. Using a data set of 105 advertisements for sports and energy drinks media content coded by five coders, we demonstrate that Item Response Theory can track coder performance over time and give coder-specific information on the consistency of decisions over qualitatively coded objects. We conclude that IRT should be added to content analysts’ tool kit of useful methodologies to track and evaluate content coders’ performance.

     

A study of the employment system of Japanese multinational retailers in Hong Kong

This study examines the employment system of Japanese multinational retailing corporations in Hong Kong through two case companies - Morioka and Okadaya. The human resource management (HRM) practices- recruitment and selection, remuneration, and training and development - of the companies are studied. The different HRM practices applied to different groups of employees within each case company are compared using an employment systems model. The employment system is structured and multi-layered. The development of the structured employment system is then analysed in relation to the cultural and sectoral factors. It is shown that only the cultural characteristics of the Japanese parent companies can explain the ethnocentric management approach used in which Japanese personnel are employed in the internal labour marker (ILM) and local employees are employed outside the ILM. Economic and labour market conditions in both parent and host countries and sectoral characteristics have also contributed to the stratification of the employment system among the local employees. The implications of this study are that the long-term development of Japanese multinational retailers will be weakened if the structured employment system persists.     

Evaluating corporate image and reputation using fuzzy MCDM approach in airline market

In today’s highly competitive airline market, preferable corporate image is acknowledged as having high potential to impact customer loyalty. Corporate image provides a powerful way of differentiating a company from its competitors and stimulating purchases. In the past, corporate image has been a vague concept and has been difficult to measure quantitatively. A fuzzy MCDM (Multi Criteria Decision Making) model is thus proposed. It can quantify corporate image and reputation so that management can fully comprehend the relative positioning of company in the markets to make informed judgments and marketing strategies. A study of international airlines serving in Taiwan is conducted for verification. The results indicate that safety record and service emerge as the critical factors of the air transport market while the incentives seem to have little attraction for customers.     

Discrete choice models and the housing price and travel to work elasticities of location demand

Multinomial logit and nested logit models of mode choice in travel to work and housing location choice are estimated from 1970 U.S. census data aggregated to small zones of the Chicago SMSA. The estimated models are then used to derive the “housing rent,” “travel time,” and “travel cost” elasticities of location demand. The effects of sampling variation, sample size, attribute inclusion, model specification, and estimation method on the estimated elasticities are evaluated and found to be important. The elasticities are also compared and found to agree with those obtained from other discrete choice models and, in the case of “housing rent,” with estimates obtained from models based on other theoretical structure.