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A study of the price discounts granted by Morton Salt Company and other producers of table salt in the U.S. on their sales of table salt to grocery wholesalers and retailers. The discounts were found to be illegal under the Robinson-Patman Act by the Federal Trade Commission and the Supreme Court. The Commission and the Court believed that the discounts were unjustified price concessions granted to “large” buyers, consistent with the concerns of the Robinson-Patman Act. However, the evidence indicates that the most common discount – the “carload discount” – was received by virtually all buyers, regardless of the buyer’s size; the other discounts – “annual volume” discounts – though received primarily by “large” buyers, were likely cost based. The history of the discounts and likely reasons why they were granted are explored in detail.

We propose a novel method of forecasting the level of informed trading at merger announcements. Informed traders typically take advantage of their knowledge of the forthcoming merger by trading heavily at announcement. They trade on positive volume or informed buys for cash mergers and negative volume or informed sells for stock mergers. In response, market makers set wider spreads and raise prices for informed buys and lower prices for informed sells. As liquidity traders trade on these prices, our vector autoregressive framework establishes the link between informed trading and liquidity trading through price changes. As long as the link holds, informed trading may be detected by measuring levels of liquidity trading. We observe the link during the −1 to +1 period for cash mergers and −1 to +5 period for stock mergers.

This chapter examines the price impact of large trades in futures markets across 14 stock index futures contracts in 11 different international markets. On the balance, we find that part of the initial price effect of futures trades is temporary. These initial price effects are partially reversed, implying that they incur a liquidity premium; though there is some variation in this finding across markets. We also find strong evidence that large buyer- and seller-initiated trades have positive and negative permanent effects on prices, implying they convey information. We conclude, similar to research based on equities markets, that traders in futures markets are informed.

Contemporary literature reveals that, to date, the poultry livestock sector has not received sufficient research attention. This particular industry suffers from unstructured supply chain practices, lack of awareness of the implications of the sustainability concept and failure to recycle poultry wastes. The current research thus attempts to develop an integrated supply chain model in the context of poultry industry in Bangladesh. The study considers both sustainability and supply chain issues in order to incorporate them in the poultry supply chain. By placing the forward and reverse supply chains in a single framework, existing problems can be resolved to gain economic, social and environmental benefits, which will be more sustainable than the present practices.

The theoretical underpinning of this research is ‘sustainability’ and the ‘supply chain processes’ in order to examine possible improvements in the poultry production process along with waste management. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and ‘design science’ methods with the support of system dynamics (SD) and the case study methods. Initially, a mental model is developed followed by the causal loop diagram based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and observation techniques. The causal model helps to understand the linkages between the associated variables for each issue. Finally, the causal loop diagram is transformed into a stock and flow (quantitative) model, which is a prerequisite for SD-based simulation modelling. A decision support system (DSS) is then developed to analyse the complex decision-making process along the supply chains.

The findings reveal that integration of the supply chain can bring economic, social and environmental sustainability along with a structured production process. It is also observed that the poultry industry can apply the model outcomes in the real-life practices with minor adjustments. This present research has both theoretical and practical implications. The proposed model’s unique characteristics in mitigating the existing problems are supported by the sustainability and supply chain theories. As for practical implications, the poultry industry in Bangladesh can follow the proposed supply chain structure (as par the research model) and test various policies via simulation prior to its application. Positive outcomes of the simulation study may provide enough confidence to implement the desired changes within the industry and their supply chain networks.