This paper analyzes the effects of integration between two neighbor ports with a third port sharing the same overlapping hinterland. The merger (integrated port) can select either the price discrimination or uniform pricing strategy after integration. Our study reveals that port integration is always beneficial to the merger and the third port, but results in the reduction of consumer surplus and social welfare, regardless of the type of pricing strategy implemented. Further analysis shows that when the inland transportation cost to the ports is relatively low or sufficiently high, a better option is for the merger to adopt the price discrimination strategy. When port pollution is considered and has a relatively large impact, the integration of the two ports improves green social welfare for the region. This finding provides strong support for the ongoing port integration in China. In terms of pricing strategy, the uniform pricing strategy generates higher green social welfare when both inland transportation cost and pollution are relatively low, or both are significantly high. Otherwise, the price discrimination strategy generates the best result for the region.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) systems on roads (RSR) is a recently developed framework that focuses on enhancing transportation safety. In RSR, large-scale passive RFID tags with road-related information are deployed on road surfaces or roadside units. A vehicle with an onboard RFID reader can acquire road information via reading from these RFID tags. As a result, it is critical to update the tags with the latest road information (particularly emergent alerts) in a timely manner in RSR. In this paper, we design a novel cluster-based information diffusion scheme that aims to quickly and accurately update the contents of the RFID tags. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first to focus on the problem of updating RFID tags in RSR. Our proposed scheme organizes RFID tags into clusters. The emergent information and update status of these clustered tags can be read by vehicles passing by. These vehicles can exchange such information with each other via vehicle-to-vehicle (or vehicle-to-infrastructure) (V2V or V2I) communications. After synthesizing the received information, these vehicles can update the nearby tags and spread the information accordingly. Our extensive simulation results demonstrate that our proposed information diffusion scheme can effectively update the tags within a certain time constraint under various scenarios.

This paper studies two competing firms’ choices between the contingent-price contract (CPC) and fixed-price contract (FPC) in global commodity procurement. The FPC price is determined when signing the contract, whereas the CPC price is pegged to an underlying index and remains open until the delivery date. Under both contracts, each firm determines its order quantity based on the updated belief about the market demand. The unrealized CPC price correlates with the market demand, allowing a firm to update its belief about the CPC price using demand information, thereby generating a price-learning effect. We find that, contrary to conventional wisdom, a larger price volatility could benefit the firms, and, under differentiated contracts, a firm might benefit from the improvement of forecast accuracy at its rival. We further show that the price-learning effect plays a critical role in the firms’ contract choices. First, significant price volatility forces the firms to pursue the responsiveness of the CPC. Second, the firms may adopt differentiated contracts to enhance their responses to market changes and dampen competition, and a higher competition intensity more likely leads to contract differentiation. Third, the firms in a small market seek responsiveness and contract differentiation rather than cost efficiency. This study reveals the bright side of price volatility and takes a step toward understanding the effect of two-dimensional information updating. This paper was accepted by Jeannette Song, operations management. Funding: This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [W. Xing was supported by Grant 72071210, L. Liu was supported by Grant 72371122, and F. Zhang was supported by Grants 71929201 and 72131004]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.00304 .