Civil Wars and Contemporary State Building: Rebellion,Conflict Duration,and Lootable Resources

Regardless of the outcome, civil wars are destructive events. They not only devastate the physical and human capital of a society, but also have a direct effect on state capacity. The capacity of the state is critical as it attempts to rebuild society and minimize the risk of a new civil conflict; yet, it is still not clear how civil war precisely affects state capacity. In general, we argue that incumbent victors are more likely to end with a stronger state when the conflict is short and the victory is decisive. In contrast, rebel victors require more time to build their internal capacity and thus have stronger states after a longer conflict, especially when they had access to lootable resources.     

The (s,Q) inventory model with Erlang lead time and deterministic demand

We develop a simple, approximately optimal solution to a model with Erlang lead time and deterministic demand. The method is robust to misspecification of the lead time and has good accuracy. We compare our approximate solution to the optimal for the case where we have prior information on the lead‐time distribution, and another where we have no information, except for computer‐generated sample data. It turns out that our solution is as easy as the EOQ's, with an accuracy rate of 99.41% when prior information on the lead‐time distribution is available and 97.54–99.09% when only computer‐generated sample information is available. Apart from supplying the inventory practitioner with an easy heuristic, we gain insights into the efficacy of stochastic lead time models and how these could be used to find the cost and a near‐optimal policy for the general model, where both demand rate and lead time are stochastic. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004     

Cost analysis of warranty policies

This article analyzes two general warranty policies involving an initial free replacement period, followed by a pro rata period. We examine the short-run total costs and longrun average costs under these policies. Formulas for both consumer costs and manufacturer profits under warranty are derived. We also study the expected number of purchases over the product life cycle under both policies. Bounds for the expected total costs and expected number of purchases are obtained for the case where the failure distribution of the item is new better than used.