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In this dissertation, we focus on three dierent and important operational issues that arise primarily in the context of emerging economies.In the first chapter, we discuss three audit mechanisms that buyers can adopt to ensure supplier compliance in a multi-buyer-single-supplier supply chain. When suppliers (i.e., contract manufacturers) fail to comply with health and safety regulations, buyers (retailers) are compelled to improve supplier compliance by conducting audits and imposing penalties. We discuss three audit mechanisms independent, joint, and shared and evaluate their performance. We show that the damage costs of the buyers and the compliance cost of the supplier play a crucial role in the choice of the audit mechanism that improves channel profits.In the second chapter, we focus on a single-buyer-single-supplier supply chain, not necessarily in the context of emerging economies, and discuss two contracts that can coordinate the supply chain when advance-orders are cheaper to manufacture than rush orders. We show that advance-order discount, when combined with minimum-order-quantity or with inventory-delegation, coordinates the supply chain.In the third chapter, we focus on the role of crop minimum support prices (MSPs) in the context of emerging economies in which farming communities largely comprise of small farmers. We show that MSPs, when not chosen properly, can backfire by hurting farmers' profits.

AbstractIn this study, we analyze the joint pricing and inventory management during new product introduction when product shortage creates additional demand due to hype. We develop a two‐period model in which a firm launches its product at the beginning of the first period, before it observes sales in the two periods. The product is successful with an exogenous probability, or unsuccessful with the complementary probability. The hype in the second period is observed only when the product is successful. The firm learns the actual status of the product only after observing the first‐period demand. The firm must decide the stocking level and price of the product jointly at the beginning of each of the two periods. In this article, we derive some structural properties of the optimal prices and inventory levels, and show that (i) firms do not always exploit hype, (ii) firms do not always increase the price of a successful product in the second period, (iii) firms may price out an unsuccessful product in the first period if the success probability is above a threshold, and (iv) such a threshold probability is decreasing in the first‐period market potential of the successful product. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 62: 304–320, 2015

ABSTRACTThe alarmingly increasing trends in worldwide waste generation call for a holistic analysis of waste management supply chains. Using a comprehensive end‐to‐end (i.e., waste generation to waste disposal) decision framework, this article analyzes key decisions of a waste management firm (WMF) focused on the proportions of dry (and wet) waste to recycle (and compost). This framework is applied to assess the impact of: (i) the preprocessing of generated waste at source (i.e., the "upstream factors") and (ii) the market prices of recycled dry and composted wet wastes (i.e., the "downstream factors") on WMF's decisions. One key insight is that the WMF will choose to process more waste when the market prices for processed wastes are high, and/or when more waste is preprocessed at source. Improvements in presorting can be more economical and offer a long‐term sustainable solution to efficient waste management. From a policy perspective, we observe that taxing a WMF for waste disposal could dissuade the WMF from participating in waste processing especially when its marginal processing costs are high. The decision framework and the corresponding model are calibrated to different world regions using secondary data on these regions, classified by their income levels. It is observed from our data analysis that uniform "one‐size‐fits‐all" policies are dominated by region‐specific tailored policies for efficient waste management. Hence, prescriptions should be carefully formulated based on the type of waste generated and the processing/disposal options available in a region. For example, composting more wet waste at source is a better choice in low‐, low‐middle‐, and middle‐high‐income regions, whereas this is not the case in high‐income regions. The proposed decision framework also provides an explanation of the negative impact on recycling initiatives at a local level stemming from decreasing recycled material prices. Given that this is the first study to characterize and analyze the waste management supply chain, the article also highlights some areas for future research.