Problem definition: Last-mile delivery in public food security programs is executed through pre assigned agents who enjoy monopoly power over beneficiaries. When coupled with weak government monitoring, agents do not have incentives to adhere to stipulated service standards, leading to reduced...

States across the country are taking steps towards providing digital identities to beneficiaries of their Public Distribution System. In doing so, use of Aadhaar based biometrics seems to be the preferred choice of method. However, this method has been widely criticized for several reasons such...

Public sector supply chains across the developing world routinely experience diversion of subsidized goods for private gain. Governments are increasingly turning to digital technology interventions for better monitoring and planning of these supply chains but empirical evidence regarding their...

Payment for results (PfR) funding approach, where donors reimburse the non-profit organization (NPO) based on outcomes, is being increasingly adopted in the non-profit sector. However, there is also concern expressed by many voluntary organizations that such a funding approach puts undue...

We consider how trade credit can coordinate a two-echelon supply chain in the presence of supplier moral hazard and costly working capital financing. While trade credit resolves moral hazard problems in the absence of working capital financing costs, we show that this is not necessarily true...

Adverse commodity prices can cause significant negative cash flows and expose firms that deal in commodities to financial distress. In this paper we consider the dynamic risk management problem for a commodity processor operating in a partially complete market, facing both price uncertainty and...

We consider the integrated optimization problem of procurement, processing and trade of commodities over a network in a multiperiod setting. Motivated by the operations of a prominent commodity processing firm, we model a firm that operates a star network with multiple locations at which it can...

Performance-based contracting is gaining widespread acceptance in supply chains where moral hazard might prevent either or both supply chain entities from exerting the first-best effort that improves supply chain outcomes. We analyze the use of delayed payments as a performance-based contract...