Operational And Financing Strategies In Low Carbon Supply Chains With Capital Constraints

With the rapid development of industrial economics,the volume of carbon emission has been significantly increasing in recent years,thus leading to serious climate change and destruction of the ecosystem.Therefore,how to control extreme carbon emission has become one of the most important challenges.In recent years,some governments have announced a series of emission reduction regulations to induce the manufacturing enterprises to pay more attention on the emission reduction investment when manufacturing products.However,most of the enterprises,which are small-medium enterprises suffer capital constraint and cannot achieve their operational decisions.Emission reduction investment leads to the capital constraints of the manufacturers’ challenge more serious.As a result,both the enterprise’s economic and environmental performance is significantly reduced.Therefore,according to the government regulations about carbon reduction,this dissertation investigates that one of the supply chain members suffers capital constraint and execute his or her operational decision and carbon emission reduction through different financing schemes.As a result,the entire supply chain can achieve win-win of economic and environmental performance.According to the above industrial backgrounds,this dissertation first reviews the prior literature,and find out the research gap in the flied of low-carbon supply chain finance.Then,we establish the mathematical model to characterize the operational and financial decisions in low-carbon supply chain by using game theory and numerical studies.The research questions of this dissertation can be divided into four parts,including: bank credit financing and prepayment in a low-carbon supply chain with a capital-constrained upstream;trade credit and particle credit guarantee in a low-carbon supply chain with a capital-constrained downstream;supplier encroachment in a low-carbon supply chain with a financial-constrained downstream;and energy performance contracting in two financially asymmetric downstream manufacturers.First,we consider that the supplier suffers capital constraint and bears all of the inventory risk.The supplier can execute his operational decision and carbon emission investment by two financing schemes: bank credit financing and mixed financing.The mixed financing includes prepayment and bank credit financing.According to the two financing schemes,we establish the two Stackelberg models to analyze the impact of manufacturer’s initial capital and consumer low-carbon awareness on the operational decisions and emission reduction investment of the supply chain members.The result indicates that the higher manufacturer’s initial capital induces the supplier to make a more conservative decision about production quantity.Furthermore,the supplier changes his willingness from mixed financing to the bank credit financing.Second,we consider that the manufacturer suffers capital constraint under cap-and-trade regulation.The manufacturer can execute his operational decision and carbon emission investment by two financing schemes: partial credit guarantee and combining trade credit with partial credit guarantee.According to the two financing schemes,we establish the two Stackelberg models to analyze the ratio of partial credit guarantee on the supplier decision-making regarding that whether the supplier should provide partial credit guarantee or the combination of trade credit with partial credit guarantee.The result indicates that when the ratio of partial credit guarantee is within a relatively low range,the supplier should only provide partial credit guarantee for the capital-constrained manufacturer.Otherwise,the supplier should choose the combination of trade credit with partial credit guarantee.Third,we consider that the manufacturer suffers capital constraint under carbon tax regulation.The manufacturer can execute his operational decision by trade credit,but the carbon emission investment should be implemented by two other financing schemes: the supplier finance and energy performance contracting.Energy performance contracting means that the supplier acts as an energy service company to bear investment cost of carbon emission and help the manufacturer to implement carbon emission.Finally,the manufacturer should share partial carbon tax savings for the supplier.However,the supplier also may investment a fixed cost to encroach the manufacturer’s market.According to the two financing schemes,we establish the Stackelberg models to demonstrate that whether the supplier should enter the manufacturer’s market and compete with him under three scenarios.Fourth,we consider two financially asymmetric manufacturers under carbon tax regulation.The financially weak one needs the trade credit offered from the supplier to address the capital of ordering.However,the two manufacturers have no ability to implement carbon emission investment.The supplier can act as an energy service company to provide carbon emission reduction for alternative manufacturer.According to the two financing schemes,we establish the Stackelberg models to demonstrate that who should be chosen by the supplier to provide energy performance contracting the financially strong one or the weak one.This dissertation designs two combinated financing schemes,i.e.,prepayment and bank credit financing,partial credit guanrantee and trade credit,for capital-constrained supply chain members to execute operational decisions and low-carbon investment,thus extending the traditional flied of supply chain finance.Additionally,we introduce a new financing scheme called energy performance contracting to enrich the traditional financing schemes.The analystic results can guide the supply chain members to execute their operational and financing decisions in the realistic industry.Therefore,this dissertation can well improve the supply chain economic and environmental performance and promote the development of low-carbon economy.