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This paper analyzes upstream firms’ collusive sustainability when downstream firms adopt the relative-performance delegation in an infinitely repeated Cournot or Bertrand game. We find that relative-performance delegation makes managers acting more aggressive and that leads to more difficult for upstream collusion to be sustained comparing with sales-revenue delegation regardless of the competition modes. The driving force behind our result is that downstream relative-performance delegation decreases input price, while it makes more profit for deviated firm.JEL classification: D21; D43; L13; L21

Stable financial operation is the essential factor for the sustainable development of the cruise tourism industry. The cruise industry was one of the fastest growing before the COVID-19 pandemic. The industry is capital intensive, has an enormous supply chain, serves to improve many ports-of-call economies, hires an immense quantity of people worldwide, and has a substantial economic contribution worldwide, especially in coastal countries or areas. COVID-19 has disrupted what had been an unending development of growth and success for the cruise industry. This study aims to analyze the financial performance of the worldwide cruise industry and realize the trends in the cruise tourism industry. The study examines the statistical data of the top three cruise companies that account for nearly 74.6–91.8% of the worldwide cruise tourism for 2015–2021. The financial analysis includes economic structure, solvency, operating ability, profitability, and financial leverage. We also analyze the economic indicators of the top three cruise companies with frequency analysis, correlation analysis, regression analysis, and the financial management risks of the top three cruise companies with the Z-Score Model. In addition, the study organizes and summarizes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global cruise tourism. The study found that from mid-March 2020 until July 2021, the temporary suspension decreased passenger numbers, operating losses, and stock price losses. The research results confirm that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused the suspension of cruise ships worldwide. The break has led to a sharp drop in the number of cruise passengers, resulting in a significant decrease in operating income and profits of cruise companies, and the debt-to-assets ratio and leverage ratio have increased significantly. The excessive debt ratio will affect the sustainable operation of cruise companies and the sustainable development of the cruise industry. Because of the enormous impact and damage caused to the cruise industry by the COVID-19 pandemic, it is suggested that the cruise industry should take effective preventive strategies against highly contagious infectious diseases, deploy these strategies ahead of time, and strengthen the resilience and pandemic prevention ability of the cruise industry, to achieve the goal of sustainably developing the cruise industry.

This study established a two-stage dynamic game strategy to analyze how the planned quota and price of masks were set and why mask manufacturing firms on the national mask team (NMT) in Taiwan evaded the plan. Plan evasion occurred when the NMT decided to produce less than the quota set by the government, even though they were incentivized and able to produce more. Taiwan’s experience shows that through the collection of masks and the Name-Based Mask Rationing System, the people’s right to procure masks can be guaranteed, however, to promote market transaction efficiency, the government should adopt a lower quota for the collection of masks and allow firms to freely sell them in the market after they complete their plans. The self-interest of the government played a key role in inducing plan evasion.

Due to its unpredictability, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has changed the global business climate and commercial management practices in unprecedented ways. As a direct result of the pandemic, the hospitality and tourism sectors have shut down, and business failure rates have occurred exponentially. The franchise hospitality industry has experienced significant impact and challenged a basic understanding of knowledge management (KM) implementation in the face of the COVID-19 outbreak. A strategic KM implementation practice can not only guide a large-scale operation, but also adjust an organization’s performance and competitiveness. The purpose of this study is to examine the influential criteria of success through effective KM implementation and to predict the probability of successful KM in a post-pandemic era. The conceptual framework for KM applies an analytic hierarchical prediction model reliant upon consistent fuzzy preference relations to assist the franchise hospitality sector’s consciousness of the influential criteria. An empirical case study is used to apply pairwise comparisons used to determine the priority weights and two possible outcomes. The case study will assist franchise organizations to analyze whether or not to implement KM, interdict application, or adopt revised actions. This assistance will enhance the success possibility of KM implementation within such a crisis environment. This study uses a case setting by assessing 15 franchises hospitality experts’ opinions in Taiwan relevant to KM implementation.

In this study, under the existence of unilateral cross-border environmental pollution in two regions, a complete information dynamic game theory is constructed to discuss the environmental policy (recycling fee and treatment subsidy) formulation of the central government by two local governments. As a result, it was found that the spillover effect will reduce the level of social welfare. At the same time, the intervention of the central government and the adoption of policies tailored to local conditions will be conducive to the improvement of social welfare.

In this paper, we explore the influence of union structure and wage pricing strategies on the welfare under a mixed oligopoly which has a public firm with budget constraint. We showed that, the total utilities of the decentralized unions are higher than the utility of the centralized union under mixed duopoly if the centralized union charges a uniform wage and the productivity difference is large. The government should restrict the centralized union formed by the public and the private firm to charge discriminatory wages, and to avoid the improper use of the monopoly power of the labour union.

In this paper, we first show that if the firm’s production leads to environmental damage and the government does not implement any environmental policy by using a two-stage game model, the “excess-entry” theorem holds. We then show that entry can be socially insufficient in the presence of production externality and policy mix is needed for pollution control in oligopoly industry with endogenous market structure. Hence, the anti-competitive entry regulation policy suggested by the “excess-entry” theorem does not always hold.

This study proposes the use of consistent fuzzy preference relations to evaluate the structure of hotel sustainable business model (HSBM) dimensions and the corresponding hierarchy of evaluation indicators, and predict the overall probability of success. As fuzzy preference relations require, a group of hotel professionals in Taiwan was asked to process pairwise comparisons using linguistic variables to determine the weights of dimensions and indicators. According to the results, finances were found to be the most important dimension, followed by human capital. The number of local cultural events in the hotel was identified as the most important indicator. The predictive values revealed the possibility for successful HSBM implementation, shedding light on the vision of sustainability for the hotel industry. The results of the present study contribute to the literature on sustainability by determining the importance and weights of dimensions and indicators for hotel business models, providing an example of the use of this strategic tool in generating and modifying sustainable business models for the hotel industry.

This paper establishes a cross-industry pollution externality model. To explain a benevolent government, it may be possible to tax part of the welfare gains and use the revenue to compensate the affected polluted industry for the damage cost, thereby improving welfare. We show that the social welfare under emission tax with production subsidy is higher than the results of emission tax without production subsidy. The welfare of the polluted sector under emissions trading will be lower than the results of unbalanced budget environmental policy with subsidy. The welfare of the polluted labor union under lobby for compensation will be higher than the results of environmental policy with subsidy if the pollution damage and the weight on political contributions are sufficiently high.

Past research indicates that a licensor tends to adopt the fixed fee, in order to obtain higher profit rather than secure royalty when he participates in zero production in the market. This study instead finds that the patentee&rsquo, s optimum strategy may vary. In addition to the fixed-fee strategy, royalty or mixed licensing, or fixed fee plus royalty may be potential choices for the patentee as well which is depend on the market scale, incidence of market scale, and magnitude of cost-saving. The patentee may choose to only authorize a type of high market size based on self-interested motives. The technology licensing market is not sustainable.

This paper examines how the order of the firms' moves affects the social efficiency with foreign ownership and free entry in a mixed oligopoly market. We firstly show that when the foreign shareholding ratio is low, the entry of private followers will lead to a lower consumer welfare and higher social welfare, while the profit of the incumbent nationalized firm is higher under entry than under no entry. Further, we find that there always exists the problem of excessive entry under public leadership regardless of the degree of foreign ownership. Such result is generated by the complementary role played by the leading public firm and the strength of business-stealing effect. Our results thus have important implications for industrial and market-opening policies.

This paper compares the optimal tariff and revenue maximizing tariffs in the presence of partial privatization. We show that in an international mixed oligopoly with asymmetric costs and partial privatization, when the marginal cost of the privatized firm exceeds a critical value, maximum -revenue tariff is higher than optimum-welfare tariff. Otherwise, optimum-welfare tariff is higher than maximum-revenue tariff. In addition, associating with the market-opening policy, the domestic government should accelerate privatization path and impose a lower welfare-optimum tariff rate.

Utilizing linear mixed oligopoly model, this paper explores the magnitude of the maximum-revenue tariff, optimum-welfare tariff, and revenue-constrained optimal tariff that is especially designed for the consideration of the bureaucratic inefficiency. In particular, the tariff ranking issue is examined under both cases of Cournot competition and domestic public leadership. We found that, under Cournot competition, the optimum-welfare tariff is the highest and it is followed by the revenue-constrained optimal tariff while the maximum-revenue tariff is the lowest. But, under Stackelberg public leadership, if the domestic private firms are fewer than the foreign firms, the maximum-revenue tariff becomes the highest and the optimum-welfare exceeds the revenue-constrained optimal tariff.