The bullwhip effect and production smoothing appear antithetical because their empirical tests oppose one another: production variability exceeding sales variability for bullwhip, and vice versa for smoothing. But this is a false dichotomy. We distinguish between the phenomena with a new...

Rust (1997) discovered a class of dynamic programs that can be solved in polynomial time with a randomized algorithm. Insulated from the curse of dimensionality, this walled garden of tractable dynamic problems is intriguing, if not useful. Unfortunately, I find that the class is more limited...

A conditional choice probability (CCP) estimator of a dynamic empirical model solves both a dynamic programming problem and a maximum likelihood problem. The estimator can dispatch the former problem before tackling the latter when the utility function is linearly parameterized; otherwise it must...

I present two algorithms for solving dynamic programs with exogenous variables: endogenous value iteration and endogenous policy iteration. These algorithms are like relative value iteration and relative policy iteration, except they discard the variation in the value function due solely to the...

We estimate the effect of supply chain proximity on product quality. Merging four automotive datasets, we create a supply chain sample that reports the failure rate of 27,807 auto components, the location of 529 upstream component factories, and the location of 275 downstream assembly plants. We...

We propose a simple explanation for price rigidity in perishable groceries: inventory record inaccuracy (IRI). We build our argument in two steps. First, we tailor Gallego and Van Ryzin’s (1994) revenue management model to perishable groceries by adding an inventory waste process,...

We present analytical and empirical arguments that competition over a homogeneous service forces electric scooter firms to over-supply scooters. First, using scooter deployment and rides data from multiple sources (scooter firms' application programming interfaces, cities' transportation...

We build a structural econometric model of pricing substitutes with menu costs and apply it to quasi-experimental data to estimate the share of physical menu costs (material and labor costs of price adjustment) in total menu costs. The data comes from the adoption of electronic shelf labels...