Joint financing and ordering decisions in a capital-constrained supply chain with risk preference

Abstract

We consider a two-echelon supply chain consisting of one dominant supplier and one capital-constrained retailer. The retailer needs to solve the shortage of working capital either from a bank or from its core supplier, which offers trade credit when it is also beneficial to itself. We assume the retailer is risk-averse behavior and the supplier has different risk preference behaviors that jointly model risk-averse, risk-neutral, and risk-taking. With a wholesale price contract, we incorporate each member's risk preference behavior into its objective function. Then we derive the optimal decisions in a Stackelberg game under bank credit financing and trade credit financing, respectively. We find that there exists a supplier's risk preference threshold that distinguishes financing scheme. When the supplier is a relatively higher risk preference, trade credit financing makes both the retailer and the supplier better off and is a unique financing equilibrium. Otherwise, the members prefer bank credit financing. Besides, the supplier with relatively higher risk preference behavior prefers the retailer with a low initial capital as a partner; the supplier with relatively lower risk preference behavior prefers the retailer with a higher initial capital level. The above theoretical results are verified by numerical analysis.