Contracting in Supply Chains: A Laboratory Investigation
通过实验室实验，比较批发价、回购和收益共享三种契约在供应链中的实际表现，发现它们虽能提升效率但效果弱于理论预测，且数学上等价的两个契约实际表现并不相同。
The coordination of supply chains by means of contracting mechanisms has been extensively explored theoretically but not tested empirically. We investigate the performance of three commonly studied supply chain contracting mechanisms: the wholesale price contract, the buyback contract, and the revenue-sharing contract. The simplified setting we consider utilizes a two-echelon supply chain in which the retailer faces the newsvendor problem, the supplier has no capacity constraints, and delivery occurs instantaneously. We compare the three mechanisms in a laboratory setting using a novel design that fully controls for strategic interactions between the retailer and the supplier. Results indicate that although the buyback and revenue-sharing contracts improve supply chain efficiency relative to the wholesale price contract, the improvement is smaller than the theory predicts. We also find that although the buyback and revenue-sharing contracts are mathematically equivalent, they do not generally result in equivalent supply chain performance.