個案總覽

Describes the United Kingdom credit card industry in the late 1980s, which was really three businesses: a cashless transaction business for merchants, a cashless transaction business for card holders, and a credit business for card holders. At the time of the case, overall profitability has dropped significantly. Added value analysis is used to identify that one of the three businesses is unlikely to remain profitable (cashless transactions for merchants). With this loss of profitability, the case then considers how to limit the losses in the one business that had already been unprofitable (cashless transactions for card holders). This latter step is a problem in interactive decision theory in which players have different perceptions about the game, and these perceptions, in turn, may be influenced by each other.

Supplements the (A) case.

Supplements the (A) case.

Supplements the (A) case.

Describes a problem of bankruptcy, following the treatment in the 2,000-year-old Babylonian Talmud. A person dies, leaving a number of debts that total more than the size of the estate. The question is: How should the estate be divided among the creditors? The case presents the Talmudic prescriptions for dividing three such estates. The estate division problem is then reinterpreted as the problem of how a number of partners involved in a project should divide the total cost of the project among them. The Talmudic prescription for estate division coincides with the added value approach. (In particular, it is neither equal nor proportional division.) The analysis applies beyond the context of estate division, as the cost-sharing reinterpretation demonstrates.

Supplements Pricing for Profit: The UK Credit Card Industry in the Late 1980s (A).