Abstract We consider a supplier-buyer chain where the supplier sells a single product to the buyer over a single-period selling season, but the initial inventory level at the buyer’s location is not observable to the supplier and should be reported to the supplier. The interaction between the supplier and the buyer is modelled as a Stackelberg game with asymmetric inventory information. The key feature of our model framework is the non-negative asymmetric inventory information assumption at the buyer’s location. Because of this point, some common managerial insights in the literature do not hold true anymore. For example, we have shown that the wholesale price from the supplier is not strictly decreasing in terms of the buyer’s order quantity. Under the wholesale contract, we have shown that there is a critical positive initial inventory level at the buyer’s location such that the buyer has an incentive to report a higher initial inventory level to the supplier if and only if the initial inventory level is below this critical positive initial inventory level. Then, under this untrue reporting, we have shown that the buyer is always better off but the supplier is always worse off. Most people may think that the performance of the chain will be reduced because of the untrue reporting, but we have shown that the performance of the chain is increased if the price sensitive demand is iso-elastic type and the initial inventory level at the buyer’s location is low.

中文翻译：

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库存信息不对称的两级供应链中不真实报告的影响

摘要 我们考虑供应商-买方链，其中供应商在一个销售季节向买方销售单一产品，但买方所在地的初始库存水平供应商无法观察到，应向供应商报告。供应商和买方之间的交互被建模为具有不对称库存信息的 Stackelberg 博弈。我们模型框架的关键特征是买方位置的非负非对称库存信息假设。由于这一点，文献中的一些常见管理见解不再适用。例如，我们已经表明，供应商的批发价格并没有严格按照买方的订单数量减少。根据批发合同，我们已经证明，在买方位置存在一个临界正初始库存水平，使得当且仅当初始库存水平低于该临界正初始库存水平时，买方才有动机向供应商报告更高的初始库存水平。然后，在这种不真实的报告下，我们已经表明，买方的境况总是更好，而供应商的境况总是更糟。大多数人可能会认为由于不真实的报告会降低链条的性能，但我们已经证明，如果价格敏感的需求为等弹性类型且买方位置的初始库存水平，则链条的性能会提高低。