Article ID: | iaor2008226 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 34 |
Issue: | 3 |
Start Page Number: | 283 |
End Page Number: | 295 |
Publication Date: | Jun 2006 |
Journal: | OMEGA |
Authors: | Zhang Ding |
Keywords: | economics, calculus of variations |
We study a supply chain economy (SCE) that comprises heterogeneous SC involving multiple products and competing for multiple markets. The proposed network model is built upon operation links and interface links, representing, respectively, substantial SC operations and coordination functions between the operations. The paper presents a variational inequality formulation of the problem, the solution of which determines the winning SC and their market shares in the equilibrium of SCE. We furnish qualitative properties such as existence and uniqueness of the equilibrium. Numerical examples are presented for illustrative purpose.