Abstract
In the modelling of the flow of commodities from dispatching firms to receiving firms, consignments of differing amounts of the one homogeneous commodity and perceived heterogeneity across the available receiving firms in each zone are accounted for by using an information-theoretic approach with probabilities disaggregated in terms of the number of unit shipments in any consignment, conditional upon the receiving capacity of the firms. It is shown how these results may be approximately aggregated to yield results similar to those obtained via statistical mechanics. As the model does not enforce full utilization of the capacity of the receiving firms, it is potentially responsive to the consideration of impacts of factors such as differential pricing and credit conditions. Certain criteria are presented for guaranteeing good numerical properties of the solution.
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