One of the most important activities in the management of input items of a company is focusing on the process of purchasing, supplier selection and allocating order to suppliers. Decisions about supplier selection due to simultaneously taking inconsistent and diverse issues into account in a wide range of strategic to operational factors, and from quantitative to qualitative criteria will be co...

Laboratory methods are used to evaluate factors that affect the success of price-fixing conspiracies. In standard posted-offer markets with no discounts, sellers are able to approach joint-profit-maximizing prices when they are allowed to discuss their decisions in advance. But such discussions are not effective when sellers are allowed to offer secret discounts from their posted prices; transa...

We show that loyalty discounts create an externality among buyers even without economies of scale or downstream competition, and whether or not buyers make any commitment. Each buyer who signs a loyalty discount contract softens competition and raises prices for all buyers. We prove that, provided the entrant’s cost advantage is not too large, with enough buyers, this externality implies that i...

This paper uses unique data from the state of Connecticut to examine discounting patterns in the state’s hospital industry for the years following deregulation (1995-1998). The data provide a rare opportunity to study payer-level differences in negotiated discounts for hospital services. In addition to presenting descriptive evidence on how discounts vary across payers, payer types, and hospita...

This paper provides new evidence supporting the rationality of closed-end fund discounts by analyzing the time-series dynamics of individual fund discounts and their relation to portfolio performance and manager turnover. We show that discount changes reflect rational investor learning about fund manager skills, as well as investor anticipation of manager replacement events. Specifically, prior...

Enforcement officials and commentators suggest that there is a growing consensus on appropriate standards for single-firm conduct. This Paper reviews that contention and considers its applicability for the antitrust treatment of bundled discounts. Unfortunately, the claims are premature for there remain wide differences within the antitrust community on many policy questions. These differences ...

Problem statement Several European countries implemented external price referencing (EPR) as a pricing policy for medicines, and as such they use price data from other countries as a benchmark to determine their medicine prices. In current EPR practice undiscounted official list prices are taken as a reference. There is some debate as to which extent discounts have an impact on medicine prices....

I endors have offered cash discounts for \ / many years to encourage prompt payy ment of invoices or accounts. Under such an arrangement, the seller receives payment without delay while the buyer minimizes both cash outflow and operating costs or expenses. Because these discounts can substantially reduce routine operating expenses in areas like patient care and ancillary supplies, hospitals sho...