In Search of the True West: Western Economic Models and Russian Rural Development

Abstract In the period between the Emancipation of 1861 and the Stolypin Reforms of 1906, educated Russians sought to make use of Western models as a basis for Russian strategies for rural development. Marxists and reforming officials of the tsarist regime looked particularly to England, and to the universal economic benefits which private property systems and 'men of property' contributed to England's agricultural and industrial revolutions. In contrast, Russia's leading economists and statisticians looked as well to the economic example of Denmark and Germany, and proposed more pluralistic approaches to the dilemmas of development.     

LOT-SIZING IN CAPACITATED MULTI-STAGE SERIAL SYSTEMS

The lot-sizing problem in capacitated multi-stage systems with a serial product structure is addressed. This is a complex optimization problem that is part of the decision set in material requirements planning (MRP) systems. The mathematical model that describes the problem uses the concept of echelon stock and includes lead times. Setup times are taken into account, which implies that the problem of finding a feasible solution is NP-Complete. This paper proposes a heuristic method that provides a production plan in order to minimize inventory, production, and setup costs. The heuristic starts from a solution for the uncapacitated problem, which is given by the sequential application of the Wagner-Whitin algorithm. Feasibility is then attempted by shifting production amounts between periods. Computational tests conducted in 1,800 instances with up to 40 components and 18 periods have shown that feasible solutions were obtained in 83.7% of the instances. For the infeasible instances, on average, the heuristic is able to find solutions with very low capacity excess. The solutions' quality is evaluated through a lower bound provided by Lagrangean relaxation and on average the gap is less than 10%.     

CONFIDENTIALITY ASSURANCES AND RESPONSE: A QUANTITATIVE REVIEW OF THE EXPERIMENTAL LITERATURE

This article tests the general hypothesis that a stronger assuranceof confidentiality improves survey response by means of a meta-analysisof the experimental literature. No support is found for thegeneral hypothesis, but the subsidiary hypothesis, that confidentialityassurances improve response when the data asked about are sensitive,is supported. Under those circumstances, the effect of confidentialityassurances is small but statistically significant and is robustin the presence of a variety of control variables.