Effect of the Return Policy in a Continuous-Time Newsvendor Problem

Abstract

This paper studies the stochastic differential Stackelberg game in a continuous-time newsvendor problem with a return policy, in which one supplier sells products to one retailer and the two parties make the decisions sequentially to maximize their own expected profits. When the demand process is a general jump-diffusion process, we provide a general formula for the equilibrium if it exists. When the demand rate is an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck (O–U) process, we prove the existence and uniqueness of the equilibrium and find an explicit expression for the equilibrium. Computational results show that the return policy has significant impact on the Stackelberg equilibrium.