Economic Competition and Nuclear Cooperation

The number of bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements surged during the “nuclear renaissance” of the past decade. This proliferation is only partially explained by the prevailing approaches that focus on strategic imperatives. To supplement these explanations, this study draws on neoliberal models of economic competition to posit that bilateral agreement negotiations also exhibit conditions of “uncoordinated interdependence” and maneuvering to gain market share. Case evidence suggests the contours of supplier state bids for civilian assistance are determined at least as much by considerations about economic competition as they are by positive strategic goals. In addition, this study identifies several cases of cooperation where there appears to be little or no strategic motive for export agreements. The study concludes that patterns of economic competition and the influence of peers in defined competitive spaces alter material payoffs and impact policies. It also identifies a surprising role for principled restraint in dampening strategic and economic competition in some dyads.     

International armaments collaboration and the limits of reform

Budgetary pressures have driven a steady expansion of armaments collaboration projects internationally. This has also been the case in Europe where it is estimated that currently one-fifth of European procurement budgets are spent on collaborative weapons systems and the European Defence Agency has the long-term objective of increasing this figure by over 50%. The purpose of this article is to assess whether collaborative armaments projects can offer the benefits frequently attributed to them. To this end, the study examines the five combat aircraft projects that European states have collaboratively undertaken since the 1950s.     

Terrorism,crime and public spending: Panel VAR evidence from europe

Within a panel VAR framework and utilizing generalized impulse response and forecast error variance decomposition analysis, we explore the dynamic effects of terrorism and crime on public order and safety spending across European countries during the period 1994–2006. Our findings show that a ‘shock’ in terrorism and/or in crime, significantly increases the subsequent trajectory of public order and safety spending. As a by-product, we find that public spending is ineffective in reducing observed crime or terrorism.     

Investigating the Desirability of Navy Aircraft Service Life Extension Programs

Building on prior work on optimal replacement of aging aircraft, this paper presents three methodologies to evaluate prospective aviation Service Life Extension Programs (SLEPs) and applies these methodologies to US Navy F/A-18E/F data. While considerable uncertainty remains as to the values of key parameters (e.g. the cost of F/A-18E/F SLEPs), the preponderance of the evidence available at this juncture favors undertaking SLEPs on F/A-18E/Fs rather than replacing them with new Joint Strike Fighters.     

The Demand for Military Spending in Egypt

Egypt plays a pivotal role in the security of the Middle East as the doorway to Europe and its military expenditure reflects its involvement in the machinations of such an unstable region, showing considerable variation over the last 40?years. These characteristics make it a particularly interesting case study of the determinants of military spending. This paper specifies and estimates an econometric model of the Egyptian demand for military spending, taking into account important strategic and political factors. Both economic and strategic factors are found to play a role in determining military burden/spending, with clear positive effects of lagged military burden, suggesting some sort of institutional inertia, plus negative output and net exports effects. The strategic effect as a result of the impact of Israel’s military burden is mostly positive and significant, though its impact is reduced when the impact of important strategic events are taken into account. The military spending of Egypt’s allies Jordan and Syria generally seems to have had no effect on Egypt’s spending. These results are consistent over a range of econometric techniques.     

One size does not fit all: personalized incentives in military compensation

A critical element in implementing a compensation scheme including nonmonetary incentives (NMIs) is recognizing that preferences vary widely across Service members. There are at least three sources of variability: across different population classes, across individuals within a population class, and across NMI packages for a particular individual. Surveys across different military communities, ranks, and years of Service show the difficulty of identifying any NMI that has significant value for even 50% of the active duty force. At the same time, approximately 80% of the surveyed Service members expressed a significant positive value for at least one NMI. Therefore, one-size-fits-all incentive packages will not be nearly as effective as more personalized incentive packages. The authors discuss variability in Service member NMI preferences and outline an approach to implementing personalized NMI packages in military compensation through a sealed-bid reverse auction, where Service members select individual NMIs from a “cafeteria-style” menu of options.     

空投设备气囊缓冲系统的缓冲特性分析与匹配方法

采用解析分析法,根据排气口流量方程和载荷运动方程建立了无量纲的空投设备气囊缓冲过程数学模型,并根据此模型构造了气囊的匹配设计图。讨论了排气口面积、气囊高度、着陆初速度、载荷质量、气囊底面积及排气口开启压力等参数对气囊缓冲性能的影响,提出了空投设备气囊缓冲系统的参数匹配设计方法,为空投设备气囊缓冲系统的匹配设计提供了技术支持。     

Optimal stocking policies for low usage items in multi-echelon inventory systems

Multi-echelon logistic systems are essential parts of the service support function of high technology firms. The combination of technological developments and competitive pressures has led to the development of services systems with a unique set of characteristics. These characteristics include (1) low demand probabilities: (2) high cost items; (3) complex echelon structures; (4) existence of pooling mechanisms among stocking locations at the same echelon level; (5) high priority for service, which is often expressed in terms of response time service levels for product groups of items: (6) scrapping of failed parts; and (7) recycling of issued stock due to diagnostic use. This article develops a comprehensive model of a stochastic, multi-echelon inventory system that takes account of the above characteristics. Solutions to the constrained optimization problem are found using a branch and bound procedure. The results of applying this procedure to a spare parts inventory system for a computer manufacturer have led to a number of important policy conclusions.     

A branch and bound algorithm for solving a class of nonlinear integer programming problems

This article presents a branch and bound method for solving the problem of minimizing a separable concave function over a convex polyhedral set where the variables are restricted to be integer valued. Computational results are reported.     

Warranty design under buyer and seller risk aversion

This paper provides a framework in which warranty policies for non-repairable items can be evaluated according to risk preferences of both buyers and sellers. In particular, a warranty price schedule is established such that sellers are indifferent among the policies. Given this schedule, a buyer's response is expressed by selecting the price-warranty combination that minimizes disutility. Within this framework, a warranty can be viewed as an instrumet of risk management that can induce more sales and greater profitability. For given utility functions, analytical results for the development of a price schedule are developed. Numerical results illustrate the substitution effects between warranty terms, prices, and risk parameters.