The Strategic Role of Supplier Learning
研究了供应商拥有成本信息优势并能通过学习提高效率的采购问题，发现供应商学习可能损害利润，信息不对称反而可能提升效率，忽视学习的代理效应会误导合同设计。
Problem definition: We study a procurement problem, where the supplier holds superior cost information and can learn to improve efficiency over time. Despite its prevalence, the supply chain literature provides limited guidance on how to manage learning suppliers with evolving private information. Methodology/results: We use mechanism design. We show that supplier learning has both efficiency and agency effects, it can induce countervailing incentives, and the agency effect can overwhelm the efficiency effect. As a result, (i) supplier learning can hurt profits, (ii) information asymmetry can improve efficiency, (iii) production distortion can go upward, and (iv) ignoring the agency effect of learning can mislead contract design and inflict severe losses. Managerial implications: Our results suggest that previous studies may have overlooked the downside of learning and overestimated the harm of information asymmetry. Moreover, our results help explain when and why firms should overproduce output and disclose private information voluntarily. By highlighting the strategic role of supplier learning, this study sharpens our understanding of supply chain management. Funding: L. Gao is partly supported by the CoR research grant at University of California, Riverside. W. Zhang is partly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 71821002]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2021.0285 .