Cores of inventory centralization games

Consider a set of n stores with single-item and single-period demands. Assu me an option of centralized ordering and inventory with holding and penalty casts only. In this case, a cooperative inventory "centralization" game "d efines'" allocations of the cost. We examine; the conditions under which su ch an inventory centralization game has a nonempty core. We prove the exist ence of nonempty core far demands with symmetric distributions and the exis tence of nonempty core for joint multivariate normal demand distribution. W e establish the equivalency of four different nonempty core conditions for the Newsboy Problem and demonstrate their efficiency for discrete independe nt and identically distributed (iid) demands. Journal of Economic Literatur e Classification Numbers: C44, C62, C71, (C) 2000 Academic Press.