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The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of information asymmetry on revenue sharing contracts and performance in a dual-channel supply chain. First, the authors model the optimum revenue sharing contract in a dual-channel supply chain under both the full information case and the asymmetric information case. Second, they contrast the optimal decisions of a dual-channel supply chain between the full information case and the asymmetric information case. Third, they explore the impact of asymmetric cost information on the performance of a dual-channel supply chain and investigate the information value.

The authors present two main issues associated with revenue sharing contracts to alleviate manufacturer–retailer conflicts in a dual-channel supply chain. In the first issue, a revenue sharing contract is designed in a dual-channel supply chain under asymmetric cost information conditions, based on the principal-agent model. In the second issue, an optimal revenue sharing contract under full information conditions, based on the Stackelberg game is discussed. They explore the impact of asymmetric cost information on the performance of a dual-channel supply chain and investigate the information value based on comparative static analysis.

First, the direct sale price is unchanged and independent of the retailer’s cost construct, but the wholesale price increases and the retail sale price does not decrease under asymmetric cost information. The information asymmetry leads to higher direct sale demand and lower retail sale demand. Second, information asymmetry is beneficial for the retailer, but imposes inefficiency on the manufacturer and the whole supply chain. Third, the performance of the dual-channel supply chain is improved if the retailer’s cost information is shared and the dual-channel supply chain reaches coordination. The retailer is willing to share its cost information if the lump sum side payment that the manufacturer offers can make up the retailer’s reduced profit due to sharing this information.

The authors proposed a contract menus design model in a dual-channel supply chain. They examine how information asymmetry affects optimal policies and performance. They compared the optimal policies under symmetric information and asymmetric information. Conditions under which the partners prefer sharing information are identified. They quantified the information value from the points of partners and the whole system.

A lack of visibility into the manufacturer’s production cost information impedes a retailer’s ability to maximize her own profits, especially when market demand is uncertain. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of an option contract within a one-period two-echelon supply chain in the presence of asymmetric cost information.

Based on the principal-agent model, the retailer, acting as a Stackelberg leader, offers a menu of option contracts to mitigate the risk of uncertain demand and reveal asymmetric production cost information. The optimal contract in asymmetric and symmetric information scenarios is derived. Finally, the impact of production costs on the optimal contracts and the actors’ profits is explored by numerical experiments.

By comparing the optimal equilibrium solutions in two scenarios, the authors show that asymmetric cost information has a large impact on the optimal option contract and profits. In addition, information rent is affected by the type differential. The results prove that the level of information asymmetry plays a vital role in option contracts and profits.

Different from the existing literature on private demand information, this paper considers a supply chain with asymmetric cost information in the context of option contracts. Interestingly, not only the production cost but also the probability of a low production cost can affect the option strike price. In addition, from the perspective of the manufacturer, a high cost does not always bring a high information rent. These findings can provide some guidance to decision-makers.

This paper aims to provide further evidence on asymmetric cost behavior (cost stickiness) from one of the emerging economies, Egypt. The study provides empirical evidence on the potential impact of corporate governance on nature and extent of asymmetric cost behavior.

The study estimates three multiple regression models using ordinary least squares to examine the behavior of cost of goods sold (COGS) and the influence of board characteristics and other control variables in a sample of 80 listed companies during 2008-2013.

The analysis provides evidence on COGS asymmetric behavior, where the analysis finds that COGS increases by 1.05 per cent but decrease by 0.85 per cent for an equivalent activity change of 1 per cent, which contradicts the traditional cost model assumption that costs behave linearly. In addition, the analysis finds that firm-year observations with larger boards, role duality and higher non-executives ratio exhibit greater cost asymmetry than others, while firms-years with successive sales decrease, higher economic growth and institutional ownership found to exhibit lower cost stickiness.

This study contributes by providing evidence on asymmetric cost behavior from one of emerging economies. Further, the study extends the very few studies on the relationship between corporate governance and asymmetric cost behavior. In addition, the study contributes by examining a different cost type (COGS) that has been examined by very few studies. Finally, the study provides an evaluation of the 2007 Egyptian Corporate Governance Code in the cost behavior context.

A country’s institutional environment influences every facet of its business. This paper aims to identify institutional factors (state ownership, government attention on employment and employees’ educational background) that affect the asymmetric cost behavior in China.

Using 2,570 listed firms’ data between 2002 and 2015, we use empirical models to explore the effects of state ownership, government attention on employment and employees’ educational background on the asymmetric cost behavior in China.

This study found that the asymmetric cost behavior of central state-owned enterprises (CSOEs) is greater than local state-owned enterprises (LSOEs). Meanwhile, the empirical results show that government attention on employment is reflected in five-year government plans, and employees’ educational backgrounds are positively associated with asymmetric cost behavior.

This study contributes to the economic theory of sticky costs, institutional theory and asymmetric cost behavior literature by providing evidence that shows how government intervention and employee educational background limit the flexibility of corporate cost adjustments. Additionally, this study provides guidance to policymakers by showing how government long-term plans affect firm-level resource adjustment decisions.

Cost behaviour literature is expanding its reach beyond developed economies; however, there is limited knowledge about its causes in emerging economies. This is an exploratory study of sticky costs behaviour determinants in Argentina, a country with periodic political and economic turbulence. The purpose of this paper is to test the effect of GDP, asset intensity, industry and cost type in an inflationary context.

Anderson et al. (2003) empirical regression (ABJ model) is replicated in Argentina with 667 observations from 96 firms between the years 2004 and 2012. It uses panel data and variables are defined as change rates between two periods. The sample excludes financial and insurance firms. It tests if sticky cost behaviour changes in periods of macroeconomic deceleration, or in firms belonging to industries with different asset intensity levels, or among different cost types.

The analysis shows that costs are sticky in Argentina, where a superb economic outlook is required to delay cutting resources or increasing costs. Cost behaviour is affected by social and cultural factors, such as labour inflexibility driven by powerful unions and not by protective employment laws, asset intensity (industry) and macroeconomic environment. Results suggest that costs are sticky for aggregate samples, but not for all subsamples.

Administrative costs are sticky when GDP grows; but when growth declines, managers or firms do not delay cost cutting actions. Some subsamples are extreme cases of stickiness while others are anti-sticky, casting some doubt on the usefulness of sticky costs empirical tests applied to country-wide samples. Careful selection of observations for sticky costs studies in emerging economies is critical.

Evidence from previous studies show that on average costs are remarkably sticky in Argentina; this study shows that cost reduction activities occur faster but are not persistent enough to change the aggregated long-term results of cost stickiness in the presence of moderate to high inflation. The study contributes to the literature by suggesting that observations used in sticky costs studies from emerging economies might be mainly from positive macroeconomic environments, might have skewed results due to extreme cases of stickiness or might be distorted by inflation.

The purpose of this paper is to provide further empirical evidence on the asymmetric cost behavior, cost stickiness, in an emerging country, Egypt, which lacks academic research on this subject.

This study uses multiple regression analysis to analyze the behavior of selling, general, and administrative costs (SG&A) and cost of goods sold (CGS) individually and jointly using total costs (TC) for the period 2004-2011 for Egyptian-listed firms. In addition, the study compares the cost behavior three years prior to and after the application of the corporate governance code in Egypt in 2007.

The results indicate that asymmetric cost behavior is common among Egyptian-listed firms as their SG&A, CGS, and TC were found to be sticky during the study period. The application of the corporate governance code in Egypt was found to affect the nature of SG&A – the behavior of these costs changed from sticky before the code to anti-sticky after the application of the code. Moreover, the code was found to affect the magnitude of stickiness of both CGS and TC.

Greater awareness about cost behavior is important for emerging markets such as Egypt in order to protect investors’ interests and satisfy their information needs. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to provide evidence on cost stickiness in Egypt. Moreover, this study provides further evidence on the correlation between corporate governance and asymmetric cost behavior.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of cost stickiness on conditional conservatism.

The research sample consists of listed companies from 18 countries, using stock market indices of the BRICS, MIST, North Africa, USA and EU over the period ranging from 1997 to 2015. The authors use the firm-fixed effects method in the estimation of the models.

The results provide evidence of the existence of cost stickiness and conditional conservatism in the international context, using the Banker et al. (2016) model. They also argue that the conditional conservatism model (Basu, 1997) is overstated because it does not control for cost stickiness. In additional analyses, the authors conclude that the association between cost stickiness and accounting conservatism changes across country groups and across industries. The authors also document that the employee intensity and free cash-flow, as cost stickiness determinants, remain significant in the model including accounting conservatism. Moreover, the findings show that sticky cost behavior distorts inferences about standard demand drivers of conservatism such as leverage and size.

The findings are interesting and provide a better understanding of cost stickiness and conditional conservatism, and the interaction between these two phenomena in the international context, across country groups and across industries. To the best of the author’s knowledge, the study is the first one including free cash flow as a proxy for agency problem in the full model combining conservatism and cost stickiness models (Banker et al., 2016).

This paper aims to examine whether costs respond asymmetrically to demand change, and examine the influence of economic growth on cost stickiness, in the pre- and post-2008 financial crisis periods.

This study uses multiple regression models to investigate the behavior of three costs: selling, general and administrative (SG & A), cost of goods sold (COGS) and operating costs (OCs) for the 2004-2011 period. Moreover, the study compares cost stickiness during the economic prosperity period (2006-2008) with cost stickiness during the economic recession period (2009-2011).

The results reveal that SG & A increased by 0.38 per cent but decreased by 0.08 per cent, and COGS increased by 1.02 per cent but decreased by 0.57 per cent for a 1 per cent demand change, which proves cost stickiness. However, OC increased by 0.91 per cent, but decreased by 1.03 per cent for a 1 per cent demand change, which proves cost anti-stickiness. Moreover, SG & As were sticky during the prosperity period, but anti-sticky during the recession period. COGSs were sticky in both periods; however, the extent of cost stickiness is larger in the prosperity period. In contrast, OC were statistically insignificant in both periods.

The results imply that managers should not use the same cost model all the time, as the economic growth fluctuations were found to affect the nature and extent of cost behavior. In addition, researchers should provide a modified cost model that considers the nonlinearity of correlation between costs and activity.

We explore the driving forces behind the channel choices of the manufacturer and the platform by considering asymmetric selling cost and demand information.

This paper develops game-theoretical models to study different channel strategies for an E-commerce supply chain, in which a manufacturer distributes products through a platform that may operate in either the marketplace channel or the reseller channel.

Three primary models are built and analyzed. The comparison results show that the platform would share demand information in the reseller channel only if the service cost performance is relatively high. Besides, with an increasing selling cost, the equilibrium channel might shift from the marketplace to the reseller. With increasing information accuracy, the manufacturer tends to select the marketplace channel, while the platform tends to select the reseller channel if the service cost performance is low and tends to select the marketplace channel otherwise.

All these results have been numerically verified in the experiments. At last, we also resort to numerical study and find that as the service cost performance increases, the equilibrium channel may shift from the reseller channel to the marketplace channel. These results provide managerial guidance to online platforms and manufacturers regarding strategic decisions on channel management.

Although prior research has paid extensive attention to the driving forces behind the online channel choice between marketplace and reseller, there is at present few study considering the case where a manufacturer selling through an online platform faces a demand information disadvantage in the reseller channel and sales inefficiency in the marketplace channel. To fill this research gap, our work illustrates the interaction between demand information asymmetry and selling cost asymmetry to identify the equilibrium channel strategy and provides useful managerial guidelines for both online platforms and manufacturers.