Incentive Mechanism Design in Operations and Supply Chain Management

题目：运营与供应链管理中的激励机制设计 供应链由决策者管理的相互关联的业务组成，这些决策者可能有不同的目标，而且关于彼此目标的信息不对称。激励机制设计考虑到这种不对称性，其中委托人（例如，零售商）比代理（例如，制造商）关于问题的某个方面。在道德风险型问题中，委托人不能观察代理人的行为，因此奖励必须基于可验证的变量，如销售水平。委托人必须设计一份合同，使代理人的行为与她的激励相容，也使委托人受益。该理论在经济学中有一些应用，但在运营和供应链管理中的应用似乎很少。在本提案中，我将侧重于机制设计和开发模型，这将是相关的业务和供应链管理应用。 供应（或产量）的不确定性和产品召回的相关问题是许多行业中常见的，成本高昂的现象。最近在加拿大和美国销售的本田和丰田汽车上安装的100多万个高田安全气囊被召回，给这些公司造成了巨大损失，给车主带来了巨大不便。去年，阿尔伯塔XL食品公司召回牛肉产品，给XL和麦德龙、沃尔玛等连锁杂货店带来了巨大的成本，并对消费者造成了潜在的健康危害。大多数现有的文献供应不确定性研究的方法，减少产量随机性的影响，供应链的有效性，考虑供应商多元化。我提出了一种替代方法来解决这个问题，采用道德风险型的激励结构，这将有利于零售商（主要;“他”）和制造商（代理商;“她”）。这种安排将导致向代理人的转移（付款），并将提高代理人的可靠性，从而降低委托人的供应不确定性。委托人不能直接观察代理人为提高其操作的可靠性所做的努力，因此问题是信息不对称的问题。委托人的问题是为代理人提供一个满足一组激励相容性约束（使她尽可能地努力）和参与约束（使她同意参加这个激励计划）的不同可靠性水平的奖励菜单。 我的第一个目标是在假设决策只做一次的情况下，制定并解决这个激励问题。与许多现有的机制设计模型不同，在这些模型中，委托人的菜单由几个选项组成，我将考虑代理人可用的连续努力水平的更现实的情况。一旦我理解了这个静态问题的解的性质，我将考虑委托人和代理人之间的交互扩展到多个时期的扩展。这种动态版本的道德风险问题与连续的努力水平可能是非常具有挑战性的，因为很少有出版的工作，这些问题的激励设计涉及互动随着时间的推移。 激励机制设计理论的应用将有利于加拿大公司和消费者（作为委托人），为代理人（如上文引述的Takata和XL Foods）提供适当的激励。减少供应的不确定性，同时提高消费品的质量和安全性，是一个理想的目标，可以通过明智地应用机制设计理论来实现。

TITLE: Incentive Mechanism Design in Operations and Supply Chain Management Supply chains consist of interconnected businesses managed by decision makers with possibly divergent goals and asymmetric information about each other's objectives. Incentive mechanism design takes into account such asymmetry where the principal (e.g., retailer) is less informed than the agent (e.g., manufacturer) about some aspect of the problem. In moral hazard-type problems the principal cannot observe the agent's action and thus the reward must be based on a verifiable variable such as the sales level. The principal must design a contract so that the agent behaves in a way that is compatible with her incentives and also benefits the principal. There are several applications of this theory in economics, but the applications in operations and supply chain management seem to be very few. In this proposal I will focus on mechanism design and develop models which will be relevant in operations and supply chain management applications. Supply (or, yield) uncertainty and the related problem of product recalls are common, and costly, phenomena in many industries. The recent recall of more than 1 million Takata airbags installed in Honda and Toyota vehicles sold in Canada and the U.S. has resulted in large losses for these companies, and substantial inconvenience for owners. Last year's recall of beef products from XL Foods in Alberta has resulted in massive costs for both XL and the grocery store chains such as Metro and Wal-Mart, and potential health hazard for consumers. Most of the existing literature on supply uncertainty investigates methods for reducing the influence of yield randomness on the effectiveness of supply chains by considering supplier diversification. I propose an alternative approach to this problem by employing a moral hazard-type incentive structure which will benefit both the retailer (principal; "he") and manufacturer (agent; "she"). This arrangement will result in a transfer (payment) to the agent and will improve the agent's reliability thereby lowering the principal's supply uncertainty. The principal cannot directly observe the agent's effort to improve the reliability of her operations, thus the problem is one of asymmetric information. The principal's problem is to offer the agent a menu of rewards for different levels of reliability which satisfy a set of incentive compatibility constraints (so that she provides her best possible effort), and a participation constraint (so that she will agree to participate in this incentive scheme). My first goal is to formulate and solve this incentive problem assuming that the decisions are made only once. Different from many of the existing models of mechanism design where the principal's menu consists of a few options, I will consider the more realistic case of a continuum of effort levels that are available to the agent. Once I understand the properties of the solution for this static problem, I will consider the extension where the interaction between the principal and the agent extends to multiple periods. This dynamic version of the moral hazard problem with a continuum of effort levels is likely to be very challenging since there is little published work on such problems where the incentive design involves interaction over time. Application of incentive mechanism design theory would benefit Canadian companies and consumers (as the principals) by providing suitable incentives for the agents (such as Takata and XL Foods quoted above). Reducing uncertainty in supply while increasing the quality and safety of consumer products is a desirable goal which can be achieved with a judicious application of mechanism design theory.