UCLA

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.