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企业组成，这些企业的目标可能不同，彼此的目标信息不对称。激励机制的设计考虑到这种不对称，即委托人（如零售商）对问题某些方面的了解比代理人（如制造商）少。在道德风险类型的问题中，委托人无法观察到代理人的行为，因此报酬必须基于一个可验证的变量，如销售水平。委托人必须设计一份合同，使代理人的行为与委托人的动机相一致，并使委托人受益。这一理论在经济学中有几个应用，但在运营和供应链管理中的应用似乎很少。在这个提案中，我将专注于机制设计和开发模型，这些模型将与运营和供应链管理应用相关。供应（或产量）的不确定性以及与产品召回相关的问题是许多行业中常见且代价高昂的现象。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，也给车主带来了极大不便。去年，艾伯塔省的XL食品公司召回了牛肉产品，给XL和麦德龙、沃尔玛等连锁杂货店造成了巨大的损失，并对消费者的健康造成了潜在的危害。现有的关于供应不确定性的文献大多通过考虑供应商多样化来研究降低产量随机性对供应链有效性影响的方法。我提出了另一种解决这个问题的方法，即采用一种道德风险型激励结构，这将使零售商（委托人）和制造商（代理人）都受益。这种安排将导致向代理的转移（付款），并将提高代理的可靠性，从而降低委托人的供应不确定性。由于委托人不能直接观察到代理为提高其操作的可靠性所做的努力，因此这是一个信息不对称的问题。委托人的问题是为代理人提供不同可靠性水平的奖励菜单，这些奖励满足一组激励兼容性约束（以便她提供最大可能的努力）和参与约束（以便她同意参与该激励方案）。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，主体的菜单由几个选项组成，我将考虑更现实的情况，即代理可以使用的连续努力水平。一旦我理解了这个静态问题的解决方案的属性，我将考虑扩展，其中主体和代理之间的交互扩展到多个周期。这种具有连续努力水平的道德风险问题的动态版本可能非常具有挑战性，因为很少有关于此类问题的公开研究，其中激励设计涉及长期互动。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（如上文提到的高田和XL Foods）提供合适的激励。合理运用机制设计理论，既能减少供给的不确定性，又能提高消费品的质量和安全，是一个理想的目标。

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.