Cooperative Cost Sharing of Joint Working Capital in Financial Supply Networks

The paper introduces a cooperative cost sharing solution of joint working capital in a financial supply chain, introduced by a network with two suppliers, one distributor, and two retailers. The problem is investigated as a multi-agent system – a cooperative game of five players. It is assumed, that players may use financial tools like factoring, reverse factoring, and inventory financing. Availability and implementation of a tool depends on structure of a coalition: suppliers, when play alone, may use only inventory financing. When a supplier and a distributor constitute coalition, a supplier my use factoring, distributor may use reverse factoring in addition to inventory financing. In a coalition of a supplier, a distributor, and a retailer, the supplier may use factoring, distributor may use factoring and reverse factoring and retailer may use reverse factoring in addition to inventory financing. For this problem, a cooperative game has been constructed to distribute costs for joint working capital. Numerical calculations show that the Shapley value can be considered as a cooperative cost sharing solution, since it belongs to the C-core of the cooperative game. #COMESYSO1120