Essays on non-cooperative inventory games

Abstract

In this thesis we study different non–cooperative inventory games. In particular, we focus on joint replenishment games and newsvendor duopoly under asymmetric information. Chapter 1 contains introduction and motivation behind the research. Chapter 2 is a preliminary chapter which introduce basic concepts used in the thesis such as Nash equilibrium, Bayesian Nash equilibrium and mechanism design. In Chapter 3, we study a non-cooperative game for joint replenishment of multiple firms that operate under an EOQ–like setting. Each firm decides whether to replenish independently or to participate in joint replenishment, and how much to contribute to joint ordering costs in case of participation. Joint replenishment cycle time is set by an intermediary as the lowest cycle time that can be financed with the private contributions of participating firms. We consider two variants of the participation-contribution game: in the single–stage variant, participation and contribution decisions are made simultaneously, and, in the two-stage variant, participating firms become common knowledge at the contribution stage. We characterize the behavior and outcomes under undominated Nash equilibria for the one-stage game and subgame-perfect equilibrium for the two-stage game. In Chapter 4, we extend the private contributions game to an asymmetric information counterpart. We assume each firm only knows the probability distribution of the other firms’ adjusted demand rates (demand rate multiplied by inventory holding cost rate). We show the existence of a pure strategy Bayesian Nash equilibrium for the asymmetric information game and provide its characterization. Finally, we conduct some numerical study to examine the impact of information asymmetry on expected and interim values of total contributions, cycle times and total costs. quantities for all firm types except the type that has the highest possible unit cost, who orders the same quantity as he would as a monopolist newsboy. Consequently, competition leads to higher total inventory in the industry. A firm’s equilibrium order quantity increases with a stochastic increase in the total industry demand or with an increase in his initial allocation of the total industry demand. Finally, we provide full characterization of the equilibrium, corresponding payoffs and comparative statics for a parametric special case with uniform demand and linear market shares.