Book reviews

Jurgen Brauer's comment presents what he calls a replication of an earlier study by Higgs and Kilduff (1993) and uses it to criticize the adequacy of the Higgs‐Kilduff model. In several respects, however, Brauer has not actually performed a replication: he uses different data, a different sample period, and arrives at different results. His criticisms rest on his own setup, not that of Higgs and Kilduff. Therefore they have no strict applicability to the latter. Moreover, Brauer's stepwise model has no bearing on the Higgs‐Kilduff model, as it violates that model's specification requirements.     

Public opinion: A powerful predictor of U.S. defense spending

Public opinion survey responses regarding the desirability of changes in defense spending can be compressed into a single variable, the public opinion balance, which, when accompanied by a control variable measuring the proportion of responses in the “residuum” (no opinion or keep the status quo), permits an accurate prediction of subsequent changes in the rate of change of U.S. defense outlays from the mid‐1960s through the 1980s. This finding cannot be interpreted as a simple case of “the public got what it wanted,” however, because public opinion was not autonomous or spontaneous, and defense decision makers themselves played a central role in shaping public opinion.     

Preserving defense technologies: A strategy for economic conversion†

This paper presents a model for converting legacy defense production facilities into private‐sector economic resources. Specifically, this paper will examine as a case study the first successful conversion of a former U.S. Department of Energy nuclear weapons production installation, including reasons for its success, its costs and benefits, and lessons for public policy. It is envisioned that this model may be useful for mitigating local economic hardship resulting from defense “downsizing” and for privatizing production capacities critical for national defense.     

NON‐LINEARITY IN THE DEFENCE EXPENDITURE – ECONOMIC GROWTH RELATIONSHIP IN TAIWAN

As we enter the 21st Century, technologies originally developed for defense purposes such as computers and satellite communications appear to have become a driving force behind economic growth in the United States. Paradoxically, almost all previous econometric models suggest that the largely defense‐oriented federal industrial R&;D funding that helped create these technologies had no discernible effect on U.S. industrial productivity growth. This paper addresses this paradox by stressing that defense procurement as well as federal R&;D expenditures were targeted to a few narrowly defined manufacturing sub‐sectors that produced high tech weaponry. Analysis employing data from the NBER Manufacturing Productivity Database and the BEA’ s Input Output tables then demonstrates that defense procurement policies did have significant effects on the productivity performance of disaggregated manufacturing industries because of a process of procurement‐driven technological change.     

Research communication security in the 90s: A view from the UK

This paper develops a methodology for measuring the capital value of military assets in monetary terms. We distinguish between two military capital measures. One measure, called the value of military capital (services) summarizes the value of military defense assets during a particular year. A comparison of the capital‐services value of U.S. and Soviet tactical combat aircraft is provided for the period 1970–1984.

One feature of the capital‐services measure that makes it particularly interesting is that its size can be compared with such military expenditures as operating and support. While these latter expenditures reflect the readiness of a defense establishment, the relevant capital‐services measure reflects force structure and modernization.

A second measure, called the value of military capital (wealth), summarizes the military benefits obtained from defense assets over the remainder of their service lives. This measure depreciates the capital as it ages, and is useful for comparing military wealth with other types of wealth in the economy. We provide this measure for the U.S. military capital stock for 1925–1984.     

The Trump effect downunder: U.S. allies,Australian strategic culture,and the politics of path dependence

Donald Trump’s election precipitated a debate in Australia about the value of retaining close alliance ties with the United States. Similar dynamics are discernible in other U.S. allies as the negative impact of Trump administration policies becomes clearer. Yet despite this “Trump effect,” we argue Australia is unlikely to distance itself from the United States because at the core of Australia’s strategic culture is a very positive “cultural orientation” toward the United States that is highly institutionalized in treaties, formal bilateral ties, Track 2 diplomacy, and public opinion. Such institutionalized ties have powerful path dependent effects. Accordingly, we conclude that the Trump effect does not constitute a powerful enough “exogenous shock” to move Australia off its well-worn grand-strategic path. But this alliance relationship is marked by both high cultural affinity and high institutionalization: American policy-makers should seriously consider whether other U.S. allies can tolerate similar levels of “stress.”     

INDO-U.S. SPACE COOPERATION

In January 2004 U.S. President George W. Bush and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee announced the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP), a bilateral initiative to expand cooperation in the areas of civilian space activities, civilian nuclear programs, and high-technology trade and to expand discussions on missile defense. Today, India and the United States view the NSSP initiative as a tool to transfer high-technology items to India without compromising U.S. nonproliferation goals. The success of this proposal depends on U.S. efforts to modify its nonproliferation regulations and India's efforts to implement stringent regulations to control the flow of sensitive technologies within its borders. This report examines the Indo-U.S. NSSP initiative and associated agreements, discusses the set of reciprocal steps agreed upon by India and the United States, reviews the extent of technology transfer permissible under existing U.S. nonproliferation regulations, and presents some preliminary conclusions on the NSSP agreement.     

Steady‐state diffusion approximations for discrete‐time queue in hospital inpatient flow management

In this article, we analyze a discrete‐time queue that is motivated from studying hospital inpatient flow management, where the customer count process captures the midnight inpatient census. The stationary distribution of the customer count has no explicit form and is difficult to compute in certain parameter regimes. Using the Stein's method framework, we identify a continuous random variable to approximate the steady‐state customer count. The continuous random variable corresponds to the stationary distribution of a diffusion process with state‐dependent diffusion coefficients. We characterize the error bounds of this approximation under a variety of system load conditions—from lightly loaded to heavily loaded. We also identify the critical role that the service rate plays in the convergence rate of the error bounds. We perform extensive numerical experiments to support the theoretical findings and to demonstrate the approximation quality. In particular, we show that our approximation performs better than those based on constant diffusion coefficients when the number of servers is small, which is relevant to decision making in a single hospital ward.     

美军“爱国者”导弹武器系统维修保障研究

美国及其他军事强国都将导弹武器系统维修保障作为每年国防投入的重点内容之一,维修保障也已成为国外军工企业拓展军品产业链、保障企业持续获得收入的重要业务之一。“爱国者”导弹武器系统作为美军防空的主战装备,研究维修保障主要做法能够揭示美军导弹武器系统维修保障状况。从“爱国者”导弹武器系统的两级维修体制、陆军延寿计划两大方面分析其维修保障的主要做法及未来发展趋势,对于持续提升我军导弹武器系统维修保障水平具有重要参考价值。     

Alternatives for defense in the Post‐Soviet World: A guide for economists to the U.S. debate

The defense establishments of all major powers are changing to reflect changes in the foundations of national security strategy and resource allocation. The authors believe economists should play an active role in formulating these changes and offer an orientation to the U.S. debate, presenting three major alternatives: the “Base Force” (Bush Administration), Mr. Aspin's Force “C,” and the “Low” Alternative (Prof. Kaufmann and Dr. Steinbruner). These alternatives are compared using first‐order measures of capabilities, budgets and risk. Budgetary estimates are based on newly‐developed analytical tools.     

Private military contractors’ financial experiences and incentives

ABSTRACT

This article analyses findings from an original survey of 187 private military contractors on their incentives for working in the industry. Perceptions of contractors as “greedy, ruthless, and unscrupulous mercenaries” shape both public and military opinions of outsourcing and may impact U.S. military effectiveness, civil–military relations, and contractor identity. We find that contractors are motivated by a range of factors and that their financial experiences are not clearly more positive than that of state military troops. We recommend broad education of military and defense officials and the public in the U.S. and other relevant nations, regarding the true incentives of modern-day, Western contractors, in an effort to dispel misperceptions, increase effective utilisation of contractors, and beneficially shape PMC-military coordination. DoD may consider integrating such training into its current efforts to improve outsourcing, including its Joint OCS Planning and Execution Course, pre-deployment fora, and curricula of advanced military studies schools.     

Defence expenditures and economic growth: The externality effect

In a series of articles published in the Fall 1990 issue of Defence Economics Alexander (1990), Atesoglu and Mueller (1990) and Huang and Mintz (1990) have all specified and empirically estimated defence‐growth models based on a neoclassical production function. We now isolate the externality component in our model, re‐estimate its coefficients using data on the U.S. economy 1952–88 and compare specifications and results with Atesoglu and Mueller (1990) and Alexander (1990).     

Country Survey XIII: Japan's security posture and defense industry prospects

Defense budgets in Japan have been complicated compromises from numerous inputs ‐ including threat perceptions, domestic industrial/technological base development, support for the bilateral security treaty with the United States and internal bureaucratic politics ‐ but with the fall of the former Soviet Union, the clearest justification for higher spending disappeared. Double‐digit defense spending increases that were common in the 1980s have been replaced by annual increases lower than present inflation rates, resulting in negative real growth in the country's defense budget. Domestic economic problems and consistent government pressures for smaller budgets have further slowed annual growth in total spending and have contributed to lower procurement budgets. As a result, the domestic Japanese defense industry is facing far more constrained conditions from the growth years of a decade before.

Government policymakers are examining Japan's regional security environment as well as its alliance with the United States to determine the appropriate course for the country to take in the coming years. The formal security treaty with the United States is likely to remain a major element of government positions, but other aspects of the country's overall security posture are open to debate. Perceptions of a reduced threat environment are fueling additional pressures for defense budget cuts.

The domestic defense industry seeks means to assure its survival in domestic defense markets in this constrained environment. Expansion into overseas markets to offset declining domestic markets is an option that currently is constrained by policy restrictions on arms exports. Industry is advocating re‐examination of those policies and unlike earlier years, government appears willing to respond positively but cautiously to this lobbying.     

Probabilistic analysis of an asymptotically optimal solution for the completion time variance problem

Scheduling a set of n jobs on a single machine so as to minimize the completion time variance is a well‐known NP‐hard problem. In this paper, we propose a sequence, which can be constructed in O(n log n) time, as a solution for the problem. Our primary concern is to establish the asymptotical optimality of the sequence within the framework of probabilistic analysis. Our main result is that, when the processing times are randomly and independently drawn from the same uniform distribution, the sequence is asymptotically optimal in the sense that its relative error converges to zero in probability as n increases. Other theoretical results are also derived, including: (i) When the processing times follow a symmetric structure, the problem has 2^{⌊(n−1)/2⌋} optimal sequences, which include our proposed sequence and other heuristic sequences suggested in the literature; and (ii) when these 2^{⌊(n−1)/2⌋} sequences are used as approximate solutions for a general problem, our proposed sequence yields the best approximation (in an average sense) while another sequence, which is commonly believed to be a good approximation in the literature, is interestingly the worst. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 46: 373–398, 1999     

2010年美国弹道导弹防御系统发展现状与趋势

2010年美国弹道导弹防御系统发展发生重大变化。从导弹防御发展策略入手,总结略有不同的一体化导弹防御系统建设进展,并结合一年来美国导弹防御系统发展动向,分析未来导弹防御系统的发展趋势。     

Did Star Wars Help End the Cold War? Soviet Response to the SDI Program

The Strategic Defense Initiative was a U.S. missile defense program that played a very prominent role in the U.S.–Soviet relationships in the 1980s and is often credited with helping end the Cold War, as it presented the Soviet Union with a technological challenge that it could not meet. This article introduces several official Soviet documents to examine Soviet response to SDI. The evidence suggests that although the Soviet Union expressed serious concerns about U.S. missile defense program, SDI was not a decisive factor in advancing arms control negotiations. Instead, the program seriously complicated U.S.–Soviet arms control process. SDI also failed to dissuade the Soviet Union from investing in development of ballistic missiles. The Soviet Union quickly identified ways to avoid a technological arms race with the United States and focused on development of advanced missiles and anti-satellite systems to counter missile defenses. Some of these programs have been preserved to the current day.     

DESIGNING A VIABLE PREDICTION MARKET TO FORECAST DEFENSE ACQUISITION COST AND SCHEDULE OUTCOMES

This paper is the first to demonstrate a viable prediction market that successfully forecasts defense acquisition cost and schedule outcomes, and to provide insights for defense executive decision‐making. Already used in private industry, prediction markets can also accurately forecast outcomes and their associated risks for government programs. Using virtual money, prediction markets allow traders to ‘bet’ on some future outcome. This market mechanism turns out to be a relatively simple and accurate way to discover, aggregate, and communicate to a defense executive the collective market’s beliefs about the likelihood of an eventual outcome of an acquisition program of interest.     

Multilateral defense cooperation in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region: Tentative steps toward a regional NATO?

Some U.S. military leaders have asserted that the United States, Japan, Australia, and India and the Republic of Korea are developing multilateral defense cooperation to deter aggression and uphold norms much like North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has in Europe. Frequent military exercises and China’s threats to freedom of navigation (FoN) and North Korea’s nuclear missiles comprise the motive force for such cooperation. However, cooperation thus far has been trilateral and minimal, given divergent national interests and dispersed geopolitical locations. Cooperation among Japan, Republic of Korea (ROK), and the United States is increasing given the threat, but ROK’s public opinion is divided about Japan. Australia, Japan, and India have increased cooperation with the United States but are reluctant to conduct FoN operations with the United States to challenge China’s expansionism in the South China Sea. If China becomes more aggressive and blocks FoN or seizes territory, development toward an Asian NATO is possible.     

美国海军水面舰艇导弹防空体系分析

分析了美国海军防空作战思想,在此前提下总结出美海军舰空导弹体系主要的作战任务,说明了美海军典型水面舰艇装备舰空导弹的情况,最后阐述了今后美舰空导弹的发展趋势。     

The impact of defense and non‐defense public spending on growth in Asia and Latin America∗

For a three‐sector Feder‐Ram framework, we present time‐series, cross‐sectional estimates for two cohorts, consisting of Asian and Latin American countries. The estimates indicate that private investment, and defense and non‐defense public spending are growth promoting for alternative error components representations. For the best error components representation, greater growth enhancement is associated with the two forms of public spending in Asia than in Latin America, while the opposite comparison characterizes private investment. Although defense is growth promoting, an opportunity cost exists insofar as non‐defense spending, financed by defense spending, appears to give a small net boost to growth in Latin America.