The relationship between a buyer and its suppliers is important and often relies on factors beyond the terms of a contractual agreement. Buyers can therefore benefit from identifying trustworthy suppliers. We argue that pre-contractual actions by the supplier, for example making costly...

We consider a single-period distribution system with one supplier and two retailers. The supplier may have infinite or finite capacity. The demand at each retailer is random. When a stockout occurs at one retailer the customer may go to the other retailer. We study both the decentralized and...