Seminar (Dept. of Management Science and Engineering)

Theme：Blockchain’s Impacts on Platform Supply Chain: Transaction Cost and Information Transparency Perspective

Speaker： Jianghua Wu, Jiahao Yu (School of Business, Renmin University of China)

Time：2021-05-19 10:00

Address：Room 1008, Mingde Business Building

Language：Chinese

ABSTRACT：

This paper studies blockchain technology’s impacts on platform supply chain from the perspectives of information transparency and transaction cost. We build a hybrid-format supply chain, in which one supplier is agency selling format and sells the product through the platform by paying a commission fee while the other supplier is reselling-format. A game theory model is adopted to solve the key question: What is the optimal strategy for each supply chain member to adopt blockchain? Our research shows that blockchain technology can be a powerful weapon for the platform to adjust price and control the market. As for two suppliers, they will become better off with blockchain technology due to the elimination of information asymmetry and transaction cost. Moreover, the optimal strategies for the platform strongly depend on the competition intensity, commission rate and blockchain’s operation cost. Furthermore, we also give a side payment contract to help different players to achieve Pareto Improvement, thus reaching a win-win-win outcome. Our findings not only provide guidance for blockchain’s adoption in platform economy, but also complement the gap in vast research of information sharing.