Pool it,share it,or lose it: an economical view on pooling and sharing of European military capabilities

In a general and economical view, this article analyzes methods and mechanisms for the pooling and sharing of military forces and weapons inside the European Union (EU) in times of scarcity. Pooling and sharing could improve the EU military capabilities significantly if differences in location factors were taken into account and all states would focus on their respective strengths. More competition and less concentration are the keys to ensuring guaranteed access to military assets. Pooling and sharing are likely to be successful only if large states enhance their emphasis on collective defense by mutual aid and self-help, and reduce particularistic and parochial interests of local gain. The realm of personnel has the most potential for improvement but any change is likely to generate policy implications.     

On the nature and scope of defence economics

Defence economics uses the tools of economics to study the defence sector and its domestic and international implications. Simple models require careful application in defence economics, since indirect effects may have counterintuitive impacts. For example, while certain arms races can lead to the outbreak of war, others may have the counterintuitive effect of discouraging the outbreak of war owing to mutual deterrence.

The world is now multipolar rather than bipolar, analogous to an oligopoly situation. This multipolar world can be analyzed by a qualitative characteristic function, where the formation of a potential coalition allows study of the shift from conflict to cooperation in international relations. Some new issues to be considered in this framework include accidental nuclear war, potential arms races and conflicts in the third world, and the proliferation of chemical weapons and missiles.     

Performance evaluation of a production/inventory system with periodic review and endogenous lead times

This paper considers a discrete time, single item production/inventory system with random period demands. Inventory levels are reviewed periodically and managed using a base‐stock policy. Replenishment orders are placed with the production system which is capacitated in the sense that there is a single server that sequentially processes the items one at a time with stochastic unit processing times. In this setting the variability in demand determines the arrival pattern of production orders at the queue, influencing supply lead times. In addition, the inventory behavior is impacted by the correlation between demand and lead times: a large demand size corresponds to a long lead time, depleting the inventory longer. The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, we present an exact procedure based on matrix‐analytic techniques for computing the replenishment lead time distribution given an arbitrary discrete demand distribution. Second, we numerically characterize the distribution of inventory levels, and various other performance measures such as fill rate, base‐stock levels and optimal safety stocks, taking the correlation between demand and lead times into account. Third, we develop an algorithm to fit the first two moments of the demand and service time distribution to a discrete phase‐type distribution with a minimal number of phases. This provides a practical tool to analyze the effect of demand variability, as measured by its coefficient of variation, on system performance. We also show that our model is more appropriate than some existing models of capacitated systems in discrete time. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2007     

Witchcraft and African development

Impressive investment and growth figures and commercial write-ups enthusing about ‘Africa rising up’, ‘the continent of the future’, and so on, obscure the poverty, illiteracy, poor health and other hardships afflicting the vast majority of African people. Why has massive so-called development and technical ‘aid’ not created the expected dynamic, autonomous economic progress? A blind eye is delicately being turned to the decisive role of people – more specifically, the cultural element. Notwithstanding good intentions, outsiders seeking to promote development assume that black Africans think and act like they only need more education, training and finance in order to ‘catch up’. Outsiders easily forget that since time immemorial, Africans have developed and cherished worldviews and cultures of their own. While these are by no means immutable and do adapt to changing needs and outside influences, Africans refuse to cast off overnight the heritage that makes them the people they are. This paper examines the impact of witchcraft as an integral feature of traditional culture on African existence, notably community life, religion, politics, the law, and economic practice. It stresses the significance of traditional society's powerful egalitarian impulses as well as its profound conviction that all things – goods, wealth, well-being and life force – are in a strictly limited supply that cannot be increased, but can only be redistributed by force or through magical manipulation. While modern life gradually weakens the influence of witchcraft beliefs – in Europe these flourished well into the 18th century – the exasperation associated with Africa's headlong urbanisation actually bolsters these beliefs.     

“Disarmament Market” Effects of Information Disclosures

In yet another wave of discussion on nuclear disarmament among political scientists and practitioners, one of the topical issues concerns the problem of transparency, its mechanisms, costs, and benefits. Numerous—though often abstract—calls for greater transparency of nuclear arsenals and postures when promoting the idea of nuclear disarmament, however, do not give a clear rationale for states possessing nuclear weapons to pursue greater transparency. Meanwhile, many other research fields—such as economics and psychology—attempt to address problems related to the lack of exact information on the counterpart's activities and intentions. Economics offers one probable analog for the transparency problem: the issue of information asymmetry and its consequences. This article is an attempt to apply the classical model of a market with information asymmetry to the analysis of the transparency problem within the nuclear disarmament process. Such an approach could help pave the way for closer cooperation between economic and political scientists in the nuclear disarmament field.     

装甲装备器材库存超(欠)储状态分析与程度评价

定义了装甲装备器材库存超(欠)储的概念,提出了维修保障资源点器材储存状态的定性判别和量化方法;考虑数量、时间、空间等影响因素,提出了资源点维修器材超(欠)储程度的评价指标和评价方法,并结合某军区实际数据进行了验证。结果表明:资源点的平均超(欠)储程度反映了保障体系内所有资源点库存偏离正常水平的平均程度,可为确定调剂资源点的优先次序和供应数量提供依据。     

军事物流基地物资储存方式选择

以某军事物流基地为背景,提出了基于层次分析法（AHP）的军事物流基地物资储存方式选择方法,构建了军事物流基地物资储存方式选择的层次结构模型,建立了相关的判断指标和判断标准,借助Yaahp层次分析法软件计算各层指标权重,从而确定物资储存方式排序方案。     

基础阻抗对隔振效果的影响

经典隔振理论评价隔振效果常假定基础为绝对刚性,这在隔振效果评价和测量上带来了很大的问题,导致计算结果偏差很大.针对这一问题推导了柔性基础上的传递率计算公式,讨论了基础阻抗对隔振效果的影响.理论分析表明,柔性基础的基频和质量是影响隔振效果的最重要因素.     

Can Afghanistan avoid the Natural Resource Curse?

Recent discoveries of significant mineral deposits offer Afghanistan the opportunity to attain a level of economic development sufficient to stabilize that country's volatile security situation while providing Afghans with a reasonable standard of living. Much, however, depends on whether Afghanistan can avoid the “Natural Resource Curse,” an inter-related set of economic and social pathologies that often bedevil resource-endowed countries. In this article, the authors describe the Natural Resource Curse, evaluate the obstacles it raises for Afghan economic development, and offer a strategy to minimize the risks Afghanistan faces in its efforts to exploit its mineral wealth for the benefit of the population.     

二级库存-运输系统的联合经济订购模型

结合器材供应的实际,构建了一个国家仓库-地区仓库形成的二级库存-运输系统,以最低费用为目标,建立了该系统的联合经济订购模型,求解了该系统各仓库的最佳订货量和订货次数;运用该模型对3种订货策略（年度1次订货、年度多次订货、零库存订货）进行了算例验证,表明了该模型在优化多级库存运输系统订货参数方面的意义。