The defence firm of the future

This paper offers the personal view of a senior executive in the Defence Procurement Agency about the future requirements of the defence industry’s principal UK customer. The focus here is on trying to identify the type of corporate behaviour and range of skill sets that the UK Government will need from defence suppliers, both primes and supply chain companies in the future. The concluding message from this ‘Customer View’ is that there is likely to be a continuing market for the company that specializes in delivering defence capability. It will be a company that will be looking for a long‐term relationship, with a specialist knowledge of its various national customers and a willingness to work openly and closely with them. It will be agile in its ability to bring together diverse technologies, to package them as a system and to deliver them either as hardware or as a service. Such suppliers will also need to innovate and to adapt at least as rapidly as the threats that they seek to counter.     

MODELLING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DEFENSE SPENDING AND ECONOMIC GROWTH FOR THE FIJI ISLANDS

The goal of this paper is to examine the nexus between GDP and military expenditure. We model this relationship within a multivariate framework by including exports in the model. We use the recently developed bounds testing approach to cointegration and find that there is a long run relationship among the variables when GDP is the endogenous variable. Normalizing on GDP and using four different estimators, we find that in the long run both military expenditure and exports have a positive impact on GDP. Finally, using the Granger causality test, we find that there is evidence for military expenditure Granger causing exports and exports Granger causing GDP, implying that military expenditure indirectly Granger causes GDP in the short run. In the long run, we find that both military expenditure and exports Granger cause GDP for Fiji. Our findings are consistent with the Keynesian school of thought, leading us to derive some policy implications.     

Defense Expenditure and Income Inequality: Evidence on Co-integration and Causality for China

There are conflicting views as to the relationship between a nation’s defense expenditure (DE) and its population’s income inequality (INEQ). DE, always an important part of government budget, can easily crowd out transfer payments, necessary to improve INEQ; however, these payments may also create a demand that may raise the income levels of the lower income earners. Consequently, the relationship between DE and INEQ is an important question. This paper examines the relationship between DE and INEQ in China for the period of 1989–2012. Utilizing basic cointegration and causality tests, our objective is to add to the literature by providing evidence that China’s DE, in fact, do have an impact on INEQ.     

The causal nexus between military spending and unemployment in the G7: a bootstrap panel causality test

We revisit the causal relationship between military spending and unemployment in the G7 countries applying a bootstrap panel causality analysis that accounts for both cross-sectional dependence and for heterogeneity across countries. Using per capita real GDP as a controlled variable, we found a unidirectional causality running from military spending to unemployment for Canada, Japan, and the US, one-way causality running from unemployment to military spending for France and Germany, and bidirectional causality for Italy and the UK. The empirical evidence does not seem to provide consistent results regarding the causal relationship between military spending and unemployment in G7 countries.     

A 17th-century Pikeman's Armour from Antwerp

Abstract

A recent re-examination of the arms and armour collection at the British Museum has led to the identification of a 17th-century pikeman's armour clearly associated with the city of Antwerp in modern Belgium, the only example of its kind. The three pieces: a pot, breastplate and backplate, are part of a collection bequeathed to the museum by William Burges in 1881. All three pieces can be dated to circa 1635 and are stamped with the arms of Antwerp, a stylised depiction of Antwerp castle between two hands derived from the blazon of the Margrave of Antwerp. The armour is indistinguishable from contemporary Dutch production and it is unclear whether it was made in Antwerp or whether the addition of the arms simply suggests a use in the city.     

JXTA网络短链路由改进算法

JXTA为构建对等网络提供了标准化计算平台,制定一些协议和服务专门解决构建P2P网络所遇见的问题.为了改进JXTA路由查询效率低下问题,提出一种路由短链改进算法.在端点路由协议的基础上,根据小世界短链现象采用物理邻居策略将网络划分簇,簇内采用Pastry算法,簇间运用freePastry算法进行资源搜索,使长跳路由减少短链路由增加.通过仿真实验说明,算法可有效增加检索效率,减少节点间的通讯时延.     

Should firms conceal information when dealing with common suppliers?

A firm making quantity decision under uncertainty loses profit if its private information is leaked to competitors. Outsourcing increases this risk as a third party supplier may leak information for its own benefit. The firm may choose to conceal information from the competitors by entering in a confidentiality agreement with the supplier. This, however, diminishes the firm's ability to dampen competition by signaling a higher quantity commitment. We examine this trade‐off in a stylized supply chain in which two firms, endowed with private demand information, order sequentially from a common supplier, and engage in differentiated quantity competition. In our model, the supplier can set different wholesale prices for firms, and the second‐mover firm could be better informed. Contrary to what is expected, information concealment is not always beneficial to the first mover. We characterize conditions under which the first mover firm will not prefer concealing information. We show that this depends on the relative informativeness of the second mover and is moderated by competition intensity. We examine the supplier's incentive in participating in information concealment, and develop a contract that enables it for wider set of parameter values. We extend our analysis to examine firms' incentive to improve information. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 62:1–15, 2015     

装备项目型供应链风险控制策略

项目型供应链管理模式能有效实现装备研制过程中行为主体间的优势互补和资源的优化配置,利于供应链整体效益的提高,但各种不确定性因素会导致主体间风险传递行为的发生。为提供风险控制有效对策,通过考虑节点位置重要度和属性重要度,构建了项目型供应链节点重要度评估模型;通过衡量行为主体风险识别和风险控制的努力程度,给出了行为主体抗风险努力程度的评价方法,最后提出了一种基于节点重要度和抗风险努力程度的项目型供应链利益分配策略,该策略能有效促使行为主体主动进行风险识别和风险控制,是一种"风险共担、利益共享"的项目型供应链合作博弈策略。     

关于推进农业产业化经营的思考

推进农业产业化经营的关键是抓务实。这就要求:从科学区分外部拉动型、内部合作型、产业链一体化型三种农业产业化经营基本类型和正确处理土地规模经营与家庭承包经营、发展农业与发展其他产业、政府宏观调控与企业、农户自主经营的关系入手,科学选择农业产业化经营的模式;在正确把握目前我国农业产业化经营在农产品竞争力、市场建设、利益机制、政府行为等方面存在的问题的基础上,采取相应对策。     

Lot streaming with supplier–manufacturer coordination

Lot splitting refers to breaking a production lot into smaller sublots during production. Coordinating lot splitting decisions across multiple stages of a production process is a challenging task. Traditional lot splitting and lot streaming models implicitly assume that the entire system is operated and owned by the same firm, or there exists a coordinator who controls the operation of all machines in the system. In this paper, we consider the situation where the machines in a multiple‐stage production process are owned and managed by different companies. Every item in a given production lot has to go through the processing by the supplier's machine, followed by the manufacturer's machine, and so on. We develop and analyze coordination mechanisms that enable different parties in the supply chain to coordinate their lot splitting decisions so as to achieve a systemwide optimum. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004