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Private cost information and entrepreneurial moral hazard are serious problems that result from the significant information asymmetry associated with creators and their backers in reward-based crowdfunding. We establish a dynamic game-theoretic model to investigate the effect of moral hazard on the quality and price decisions of a creator (male) when his cost efficiency is unobservable. Backers (female) in the crowdfunding stage directly observe neither the cost efficiency nor the product quality of the creator. They then make pledge decisions based on expectations about the quality after observing the campaign parameter signals (i.e., the reward price and funding goal) and whether the regulation mechanism is implemented with a strong hand (tighter regulations mean that the creators have less moral hazard). We find that compared with the information symmetry case, when the efficiency of creators is not known to backers, an efficient creator always provides a higher level of product quality when moral hazard is present but not always when moral hazard is absent. In addition, we investigate the effect of moral hazard on the creator and consumer surplus when the creator's cost efficiency is unobservable. Interestingly, we show that moral hazard may benefit both the creator and consumers. This explains the puzzling measures of some reward crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo, which take no active role in managing or monitoring the entrepreneurial projects. Finally, we find that reasonably the efficient creator can better signal his efficiency by using two signaling devices, i.e., the reward price and funding goal; in this case, interestingly, the existence of moral hazard may still benefit both the creators and consumers. This confirms the robustness of our main results.

In this paper, we study how funds regulation influences a venture’s token issuing strategy, cash diversion behavior and signaling effectiveness, when he has private knowledge on product quality (i.e., high or low). We first analyze this problem under complete information, which extends Gan et al. (2021) to the case when funds are regulated. We find that a higher funds regulation level incentives the venture’s cash diversion behavior and induces a higher profit. Then, under information asymmetry, we characterize the high-quality venture's token issuing strategies under strict funds regulation and no funds regulation, respectively. We find that the relative sizes of informed and uniformed investors are important in token sizes' signaling effectiveness, which in turn influences the venture's token issuing strategies. Moreover, our theoretical results are (partially) consistent with some empirical observations in quality signaling and open new avenues for future empirical study. At last, we show that funds regulation may improve signaling effectiveness but it does not always benefit the high-quality venture under information asymmetry. Specifically, we show that a strict funds regulation may hurt the high-quality venture in a small ICO market; and even when the ICO market is large, the high-quality venture may prefer a moderate funds regulation level. Our results are robust when the number of investors in the ICO market is random.

In recent years, there emerge some new financing techniques as additional financing options for the entrepreneurs, especially for those, such as start-ups, that ordinarily faced difficulties in accessing the traditional financing techniques. Among these new techniques, reward-based crowdfunding (crowdfunding) and the initial coin offerings (ICOs) are the two most popular strategies. In this paper, we build a stylized model to investigate how the product characteristics affect the entrepreneur's financing choice between crowdfunding and ICO. We show that ICO (resp. crowdfunding) is more suitable for intangible (resp. tangible) products that typically have high (resp. low) fixed costs and low (resp. high) production costs. This result is built off of their different fundraising mechanisms. Under crowdfunding (resp. ICOs), the fundraising is through sacrificing the profit in the funding stage (resp. both funding and market stages). Moreover, speculators can be a double-edged sword to ICOs. On the one hand, the participation of speculators can increase the financing success rate of ICOs. On the other hand, the competition from speculators in the token transaction market will hurt the entrepreneur. We also show that ICOs become more preferable than crowdfunding in the presence of the R\&D failure risk. Finally, we examine the setting with endogenous product quality and show that ICOs lead to higher product quality than crowdfunding when the startup cost is low, or when either of the platform traffic and the production cost is high.

In this paper, we consider a supplier serving two competing manufacturers who produce and sell their products in the same market faced with the uncertain demand. The manufacturers can either participate in the supplier development programme by reserving their capacities from the supplier before the demand is realized, which is referred to as the advance reservation, or do not by reserving their capacities after the demand is realized, which is referred to as the regular reservation. Given the unit capacity wholesale prices for both the advance reservation and the regular reservation, we study the manufacturers' capacity reservation and selling, and the supplier's capacity building decisions in equilibrium when the advance reservation strategy is adopted by neither, one, or both of manufacturers. We further investigate the equilibrium reservation strategies of manufacturers. We discover that completely symmetric manufacturers may choose different capacity reservation strategies, in which case, a unique mixed strategy equilibrium also arises. We also identify the conditions under which the capacity reservation preferences of all supply chain members can be aligned, thus achieving the efficiency of the supply chain. Our findings underscore the importance of operational characteristics in determining the capacity reservation strategies.

The product life cycle is getting shorter because of the acceleration of product upgrading. The mismatch between the demand of short life cycle product and inventory leads to high cost owing to demand uncertainty and forecast inaccuracy. In order to reduce cost, the paper considers several retailers jointly replenish inventory and share inventory via transshipment after demand have realized. Based on cooperative game theory, the paper designs cost allocation rule of joint replenishment and profit allocation rule of inventory sharing for retailers. And it prove that the cost allocation is core allocation when their holding cost are same and the profit allocation is value-preserve in the given condition of the paper. Finally, we analyze the effects of transshipment on replenishment activities in view of profit allocation rule and the paper presents an example which shows that the coalition can benefit from transshipment by regulating their inventory level if the holding cost of retailers vary widely and the cost of transshipment is low.

Nasal-type natural killer/T-cell lymphoma (NKTCL) is a subtype of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) that is clinically aggressive and has a poor prognosis. Platelet-derived growth factor receptors (PDGFRs) and their ligands (PDGFs) play important roles in angiogenesis, cancer cell proliferation, survival, migration and poor prognosis in various tumours. However, the significance of PDGFRs in NKTCL remains unknown. Herein, the present study aimed to investigate the important role of PDGFRα in pathogenesis, progression and prognisis of NKTCL. Firstly, we performed immunohistochemical staining, qRT-PCR and western blotting to determine PDGFRα expression in formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue sections from 78 NKTCL cases and in cell lines. Secondly, correlations between PDGFRα expression and NKTCL clinical parameters and prognosis were analysed. Moreover, a biological assessment of PDGFRα blockade in two NKTCL cell lines was conducted through proliferation assay, cell-cycle evaluation and apoptosis detection by flow cytometry analyses. Furthermore, we detected in vivo activity of imatinib in mouse model of NKTCL. We found that the expression of PDGFRα was significantly higher in NKTCL tissues compared to the reactive lymphoid hyperplasia of the nasopharynx (P = 0.028). High PDGFRα expression was strongly associated with a high LDH level (P = 0.028) and III-IV stage (P = 0.013). NKTCL patients with high PDGFRα expression displayed a reduced median overall survival time and progression-free survival time when compared with those with low PDGFRα expression (P = 0.011, P = 0.005, respectively). Cox multivariate analysis showed that III-IV stage (P = 0.024) and high PDGFRα expression (P = 0.003) were independent prognostic factors in NKTCL patients. Biological assessment assays in two NKTCL cell lines revealed that a specific PDGFR antagonist, imatinib, inhibited cell viability, blocked cell cycle progression at G0/G1 stage and induced apoptosis. Similarly, the in vivo assay showed that imatinib delayed mouse model tumour growth. In conclusion, NKTCL tumour cells have prominent PDGFRα expression, which can serve as a candidate prognostic marker. PDGFR antagonists have significant biological effect on NKTCL and may be useful therapeutic agents for treatment of NKTCL.

We investigate the bundling strategy in a two-stage supply chain with the channel competition and analyze the effects of bundling strategy on supply chain decisions and performance. In this paper, we consider two kinds of channel competition, which are from outside the supply chain and inside the supply chain, and also consider two kinds of competitor’s product strategy with low or high quality. We proposed the game models for the different competition cases with bundling strategy and product quality strategy and obtain the optimal decisions. We find that the bundling is the leading retailer’s preferred strategy with the condition of the quality level of competitive components when she faces the channel competition outside the supply chain; and the retailer’s bundling profitability depends on the competitor’s products strategy in the supply chain setting with the inside competition. We also find that the profit of members and channel of supply chain will be improved under bundling strategy.

This paper investigates the effects of multiple purchases that arise in the retailing of consumer goods, in which the product choice and consumer surplus depend not only on what to purchase but also on how many units to purchase. We incorporate the multiple purchases into consumer choice behavior and study a series of associated operational problems. Most of the discrete choice models in the current literature often assume that a customer chooses exactly one unit of a product. The assumption of “one purchase” is too restrictive in some practical scenarios (e.g., consumer goods) because customers often purchase multiple units of a product. We take the widely-used multinomial logit (MNL) model as a showcase and incorporate the effects of multiple purchases into the classic discrete choice model. In the new choice framework, consumers first form a consideration set, then select one product from consideration set and determine the purchase quantity of the selected product. In the absence of fixed cost, we characterize the structure of the optimal policy for the assortment optimization problem; whereas in the presence of product-differentiated fixed costs, the assortment problem becomes NP-complete, so we propose an efficient heuristic. We further develop a polynomial time algorithm for the assortment problem with identical fixed cost for each product. For the joint assortment and pricing problem, we show it can be decoupled into multiple multi-product pricing problems with different assortment sizes, each of which can be transformed into a single-variable problem. For the price competition problem, we characterize the existence and uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium. We combine the alternating optimization algorithm with the expectation maximization algorithm to overcome the non-concavity and missing data issues in estimation. An empirical study on JD.com data shows that incorporating the effects of multiple purchases into discrete choice models can improve model fitting and prediction accuracy, while ignoring the effects of multiple purchases may lead substantial losses.

We provide a dynamic, game-theoretic model in which a creator (she) determines whether to signal her private product quality information by reward price in crowdfunding, when facing a potential imitator (he). The imitator will imitate the product with a quality decision after observing the creator's reward price and engages in a price competition with her in the regular market. The imitator's product has a market acceptance level, which reflects that fact that it can not perfectly bring out the same utility to consumers as the innovative product. We find that the introduction of an imitator may help the creator signal her quality. Moreover, when the acceptance level is low, the imitator may choose the same quality as the creator and the low-quality creator may be the one to resolve quality information uncertainty; and when the acceptance level is high, he may choose a different quality level and the high-quality creator may set a even lower price than the low-quality creator to achieve separation. We also show that, after incorporating the imitator's strategic behavior, the high-quality creator could benefit from concealing her product quality information by misleading the imitator to choose a less competitive product; while the low-quality creator may prefer disclosing her product quality information to reduce the competitive intensity. Our main results remain robust under alternative model settings, e.g., endogenous target goal, various introduction timing of the imitator's product, allowing non-pledging backers buying in regular market.

The sensitive and facile detection of the concentration of glucose and glutathione (GSH) is important for our health. In this work, lily polysaccharide (LP) stabilized platinum nanoclusters (Ptn-LP NCs) were prepared by a facile synthetic strategy where LP was used as a reducing agent and stabilizer. The successful preparation of 1–2 nm platinum nanoclusters (Pt NCs) inside of Ptn-LP NCs was confirmed using UV–Vis spectra, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), respectively. Furthermore, Ptn-LP NCs accelerated the catalytic oxidation of colorless 3,3′,5,5′-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) to blue oxidized TMB (oxTMB) in the presence of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), indicating their intrinsic peroxidase-like activity. The Vm values of TMB and H2O2 were 50.3 × 10−8 Ms−1 and 10.2 × 10−8 Ms−1, respectively, which were higher than those of other mimetic enzymes. The peroxidase-like property of Ptn-LP NCs was used to sensitively detect the concentration of glucose and glutathione (GSH). The detection limits of glucose and GSH were as low as 1.89 and 0.37 μM, the linear ranges of glucose and GSH were 2.5–1000 and 4–140 μM, respectively. The colorimetric method was successfully applied to detect GSH concentration in human serum. This method has great potential application in bio-related detection in the future.

We examine retailers’ timing of order placement relative to the realization of demand uncertainty. Retailers can commit to an order before demand realization (i.e., “early order commitment”), or they can postpone ordering until they observe the demand (i.e., “delayed order commitment”). In a supply chain with duopolistic retailers and a single supplier, we develop a multistage, non-cooperative game-theoretic model to study how retailers choose their order commitment strategies. We identify market conditions and explore mechanisms that result in the supply chain members’ equilibrium behaviors and preferences. Our results indicate that both retailers adopt delayed order commitment in equilibrium when the demand variability is sufficiently high or low; whereas, early order commitment arises as an equilibrium strategy for one or both retailers when the demand variability is moderate. In the absence of production lead time or capacity restrictions, key drivers for the observed equilibrium outcomes are the retailers’ price competition, flexibility of contingent ordering, and the supplier’s responsive wholesale price decision. The configuration in which the retailers choose opposite order commitment strategies can be sustained in equilibrium for symmetric retailers when the competition is not too intense or the supplier’s production cost is sufficiently low. We extend our analysis in several directions, including the scenarios with non-zero production lead time, wholesale price premium for delayed ordering, alternative decision sequence, heterogeneous retailers, and two ordering opportunities. Our findings provide useful insights for retailers regarding the development of their order commitment strategies in a competitive environment and for suppliers regarding the order placement options to offer the retailers.

We consider the cost allocation problems for the cooperative inventory consolidation programs under the time-based policy and under the quantity-based policy. We investigate the concavity of the cooperative games and propose a proportional cost allocation rule for each policy. We analyze the population monotonicity and stability of the rule. We conduct theoretical and numerical analysis to study the cooperation stability and individual relative cost savings.

We consider the diversification strategy for a mean–variance risk-sensitive manufacturer with unreliable suppliers. We first analyze the linear model and find that the suppliers are selected according to the descending order of their contributed marginal expected profit, and increasing the manufacturer’s risk-averseness leads to a more even allocation of demand across the suppliers. Then, we study the general newsvendor model. By approximating the leftover inventory with a normal distribution, we establish the general properties of the active supplier set and show that the supplier selection rule is similar to that under the risk-neutral setting when the demand uncertainty is large. Moreover, we conjecture that the selection rule also applies when the demand uncertainty is low, which we verify with an extensive numerical study. Our paper makes two contributions: First, we establish the properties of the optimal diversification strategy and develop corresponding insights into the trade off between cost and reliability under the mean–variance framework. Second, we perform comparative statics on the optimal solution, with a particular emphasis on investigating how changes in the supplier’s cost or reliability affect the risk-averse manufacturer’s ordering decisions and customer service level.

This paper studies four Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) models that the government is a leader, and the private sector is a follower. They decide road capacity and franchise price either jointly or sequentially. We find that both the government and the private sector prefer to decide the franchise price. Social welfare can be maximized if the government decides the price, and the private sector decides capacity. We further find that the private sector does not always prefer a more extended franchise period, and the profit of the private sector is concave in the length of the concession period. Nevertheless, the government prefers a more extended concession period because of the inefficient operation cost.

We consider a newsvendor who makes an ordering decision to meet stochastic demand and buys a put option written on the demand to hedge against the risk of low demand to maximize his expected utility, which is measured by the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR). The put option is fairly priced with specifications for the strike price and the strike quantity. With the consideration of lost-sale penalty cost, we derive structural results on the optimal ordering and hedging polices. We show that the newsvendor will not order more than that without the option contract when the strike quantity is pre-determined and low, and he will order more when the strike quantity is a decision variable. Moreover, the optimal strike quantity is less than or equal to the optimal order quantity in the risk-neutral setting, and interestingly there are cases in which the optimal hedging ratio first increases, then keeps constant as the newsvendor becomes less risk averse. We also show that the value of the put option increases as the newsvendor becomes more risk averse and demand becomes more uncertain. Furthermore, the effect of risk aversion on the value of the option highly depends on the magnitudes of the system parameters.

A facile method was reported for preparing self-assembly Pt nanochains (PtNCs) by using octreotide acetate (AOC) as template in aqueous environment at room temperature. The influence of pH values on the reaction system was examined, and other synthesis parameters were optimized in order to prepare AOC-templated Pt nanoparticle arrays with high electrocatalytic activities. AOC was found with diameters in the range of 50±5 nm at pH 2.0/9.0, while the diameter of AOC was in the range of 20±5 nm under the condition of pH 4.0. Catalytic activities of the PtNCs prepared with different conditions were investigated, and the results demonstrated that the PtNCs catalyst prepared at pH 4 had higher catalytic activities in relative to those prepared at other conditions. Hence, the PtNCs will be a good anode catalyst candidate for direct methanol fuel cells.

Supply chain partnerships exhibit varying degrees of power distribution among the agents. This has implications for pricing and operational decisions in the channel and eventually influences the end customers. To understand how different power schemes affect the supply chain partners’ performance and consumer surplus, we study channel structures with a dominant manufacturer, a dominant retailer, and no single-agent dominance. Under random and price sensitive demand, channel dominance is interpreted in our setting as exerting power to determine the retail and wholesale prices as well as to transfer the inventory risk to the weaker party. We analyze all problems in a game-theory based framework and characterize the equilibrium retail price, wholesale price, and order/production quantity. We show that the manufacturer-dominated channel structure leads to the highest production quantity, the lowest retail price, and the largest expected surplus for an individual buyer; on the other hand, the entire channel profit and the total consumer surplus are highest when the retailer holds the channel dominance. While both the manufacturer and the retailer are better off when they become a power agent individually, channel dominance does not always guarantee higher share of channel profits, as we show under the manufacturer-dominated structure. Further insights are derived analytically and numerically from comparisons of the manufacturer/retailer dominance schemes with the no single-agent dominance structure and integrated channel. We also study extensions to investigate the effect of demand model and risk sharing, and we address industry settings with alternative schemes of holding cost, shortage penalty and salvage value.

Stochastic periodic-review batch ordering inventory problems appear in many industrial settings. However, few literature deals with the optimal ordering polices for such problems, no mention to the inclusion of the fixed ordering cost and the production capacity. In this paper, we consider a single-item periodic-review batch ordering inventory system with the consideration of the setup cost and the capacity constraint for each order over a finite planning horizon. By proposing several new convex notions, we show that a batch-based (s,S) policy is optimal for the unlimited ordering capacity case, while for the limited ordering capacity case, a modified (r,Q) policy is optimal for the setting with zero ordering setup cost, and a batch-based X–Y band policy for the setting with positive ordering setup cost. Moreover, we analytically study the sensitivity of the policy parameters with respect to the capacity and batch order size, and derive the bounds on the optimal policy parameters. We further extend our analysis to the infinite horizon setting and show that the structure of the optimal policy remains similar. Finally, the numerical experiments provide some insights into the impact of model parameters on the benefit of reducing the batch size and increasing the ordering capacity, and indicate that ignoring batch requirement may lead to a significant cost increment.

A fashion supply chain characterized by a long lead time and a short selling season is considered in this paper. Facing demand uncertainty, the risk averse retailer has two opportunities to make order decisions before the demand is realized. The risk aversion is modelled as a penalty to the decision maker (the retailer) if a target profit is not attained. We derive the retailer's optimal ordering decisions and analyze the monotonicity behaviours of the critical market signal, the optimal first-stage order quantity, and the optimal expected payoff with respect to the penalty coefficient. We also examine the impact of demand forecast quality on the retailer's decisions and extend the study to the case where order cancellation is allowed.