Efficiency of equilibria in restricted uniform machine scheduling with total weighted completion time as social cost

In the last decade, there has been much progress in understanding scheduling problems in which selfish jobs aim to minimize their individual completion time. Most of this work has focused on makespan minimization as social objective. In contrast, we consider as social cost the total weighted completion time, that is, the sum of the agent costs, a standard definition of welfare in economics. In our setting, jobs are processed on restricted uniform parallel machines, where each machine has a speed and is only capable of processing a subset of jobs; a job's cost is its weighted completion time; and each machine sequences its jobs in weighted shortest processing time (WSPT) order. Whereas for the makespan social cost the price of anarchy is not bounded by a constant in most environments, we show that for our minsum social objective the price of anarchy is bounded above by a small constant, independent of the instance. Specifically, we show that the price of anarchy is exactly 2 for the class of unit jobs, unit speed instances where the finite processing time values define the edge set of a forest with the machines as nodes. For the general case of mixed job strategies and restricted uniform machines, we prove that the price of anarchy equals 4. From a classical machine scheduling perspective, our results establish the same constant performance guarantees for WSPT list scheduling. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2012     

Rhetoric versus reality: Canadian defence planning in a time of austerity

As Canada's military mission in Afghanistan winds down and the country faces several years of fiscal austerity, all of Canada's major political parties are agreed that Canadian defence budgets must stay level or be cut. This comes at a time when the defence department is slated to replace the Canadian Forces’ (CF) major equipment fleets. Canada's defence establishment thus faces some critical decisions. One option is to try to maintain its expeditionary capabilities across all three services: army, navy and air force. Absent substantial new infusions of funds, however, this approach is likely to lead to an overall and largely chaotic reduction of capabilities. Another option is to make some difficult choices as to which expeditionary capabilities to maintain as part of a strategic review of Canada's future military needs. Such an option would ensure that Canada has at least some military capacities which can reliably be devoted to the most demanding international operations, while maintaining those capabilities required for domestic duties and North American defence. Pursuing this option would accord with the new North Atlantic Treaty Organization Strategic Concept and the call for “Smart Defense” within the Alliance. This article assesses the arguments for and against the option of specialising Canada's future defence capabilities and explores scenarios as to what a future CF may look like.     

The French Army ‘Centre for Training and Preparation in Counter-Guerrilla Warfare’ (CIPCG) at Arzew

Psychological warfare had been used by the French army in the Indochina War (1946–54), and had spawned a sub-caste of French officers who moulded it and counter-insurgent propaganda into a doctrine known as guerre révolutionnaire (revolutionary war). In Algeria, in 1956, the army established a specialist training centre, the CIPCG, at Arzew on the Algerian coast, to provide courses for all officers arriving ‘in country’. By this, the French command sought to ensure that field officers possessed an approach to pacification and the political dimension to their missions well suited to the terrain and socio-political make-up of Algeria. The real ‘revolutionary war’ zealots were kept away from the directing staff, although some delivered guest lectures. Despite complaints from commanders of field units at losing experienced officers to the CIPCG instructing staff, Arzew students testified that the courses aided them in their missions. Some 10,000 French officers undertook courses at the CIPCG before it was downgraded and then disbanded after Pierre Messmer, a Gaullist, became Minister for the Armed Forces in 1960.     

Defence spending and economic growth in South Africa: A supply and demand model*

This paper provides a contribution to the growing corpus of knowledge and understanding of the interaction between economic growth and defence spending in South Africa by specifying a Keynesian simultaneous equation model and estimating the system for the period 1961 to 1997. The model contains a growth equation, a savings equation, a trade balance equation and a military burden equation and when estimated by single equation and systems estimation methods is relatively well specified. There is evidence of an overall negative effect of military spending on the economy over this period, though the significance of individual coefficients is low. There is certainly no evidence of any positive impact, suggesting that cuts in military spending do present an opportunity for improved macroeconomic performance.     

Country survey XII: South Africa

This article examines the relationship between defence expenditure and economic performance in South Africa, both prior to and after that country's first fully democratic election in 1994. Prior to 1994 defence expenditure decisions were largely dominated by non‐economic factors; since then defence spending has declined in reaction to, inter alia, the need to address a number of socio‐economic inequities.

After 1975 in particular, military industrialisation in South Africa placed a disproportionately high burden on the country's industrial resources and natural economic and technical capabilities. However, although this suggests that the opportunity cost of domestic arms production has been fairly high, the country's poor economic and development performance since the mid‐1970s is a function of underlying structural deficiencies and institutional constraints rather than the consequence of inordinately high defence spending levels.     

Cinematic representations of the Mexican Narco War

This essay provides an overview of the eras of Mexican cinema followed by an analysis of 10 Spanish-language narco cinematic representations, an overview of the eras of American cinema followed by an analysis of 10 English language narco cinematic representations, and a conclusion that compares and contrasts the Mexican and US narco war cinematic experience. Due to divergent national trajectories – Mexico is engulfed in narco violence and corruption while the United States is not – more differences than similarities exist between these national cinematic genres. Dark spirituality themes are also increasingly evident in more recent narco war films.     

Factors influencing the modernization of military-investment economic appraisal systems

Budgetary restrictions resulting from the present international economic crisis have tightened the need to improve efficiency in defense spending, leading to the armed forces having to undertake their duties with fewer resources. Previous reports on the subject have looked into the determining factors and effects of military spending but very few studies have analyzed the determinants for the modernization of the methodology for assessing efficiency. Thus, using a multiple regression statistical model, we have analyzed the appraisal systems in place in 28 countries to identify factors that influence the development of economic assessment of military expenditure. Our findings have revealed three factors that may favor the improvement of appraisal systems with regard to military expenditure: the quality of governance, size of the armed forces, and unemployment levels.     

Economic impact of the ministry of defence’s budget: methodological design and results for the Spanish economy

This article analyses the economic impact of the expenditure budget of the Spanish Ministry of Defence (MoD) and its Autonomous Agencies (AA), distinguishing direct, indirect and induced effects. The input–output methodology is used to find intersectoral effects on the rest of the economy. The article quantifies the economic impact in terms of production, gross value added (GVA), employed population, tax revenue, and also in terms of its contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) of Spain in 2010. The results show that the activity of the MoD and AA generates 1.2% of the country’s GDP and 1.7% of total employment in that year.     

Governance through brokerage: informal governance in post-civil war societies

There is currently a lack of knowledge about how elites rule post-civil war societies without strong state institutions. This paper argues that elites oftentimes overcome such institutional deficiencies by engaging in governance through brokerage. According to this perspective, elites outsource central state functions to influential broker figures. This is particularly true when dealing with war-affected groups that possess much violent agency. By functioning as social membranes, brokers can help elites and war-affected groups to redefine a new social contract. Liberia is employed as an example to illustrate the paper’s central arguments.