Rebates, inventories, and intertemporal price discrimination

We demonstrate that universally redeemed rebates can increase manufacturer profits by reducing the incentives of downstream retailers to hoard inventories when optimal wholesale prices vary predictably over time. By bypassing retailers and making direct contracts with buyers, the manufacturer can increase the variations in effective prices paid by consumers without concomitantly creating larger incentives for retailers to hold inventories. During profitable, high-demand periods, manufacturer revenues are ordinarily constrained by'competition'from retailer inventories, thus limiting profits. However, by selectively offering rebates to consumers while maintaining high wholesale prices, low-demand periods can be accommodated without inducing retailer hoarding.     

Electronics: The new revolution

Electronics has produced a succession of remarkable accomplishments within the lifetime of living men. Yet, new developments in the field are so vast and exciting that they may be viewed as the advent of an Electronic Revolution comparable to the Industrial Revolution.     

Recent European fertility patterns: fitting curves to 'distorted' distributions

Recent patterns of fertility in Europe show marked differences between countries. Recent United Kingdom and Irish fertility curves show 'distortions' in terms of a 'bulge' in early age fertility, distinct from the smoother curves of other European countries. These patterns may not be adequately described by mathematical functions used by previous studies to model fertility curves. A mixture model with two component distributions may be more appropriate. The suitability of the simple and mixture Hadwiger functions is examined in relation to the fertility curves of a number of European countries. While the simple Hadwiger model fits recent period age-specific fertility distributions for some countries, others which display a 'bulge' in early age fertility distributions for some countries, others which display a 'bulg' in early age fertility require a mixture Hadwiger model. Some of the parameters of the Hadwiger models appear to be related to familiar demographic indices. The simple and mixture Hadwiger models appear useful in describing and comparing fertility patterns across European countries.     

Distinctive features of age-specific fertility profiles in the English-speaking world: common patterns in Australia,Canada, New Zealand and the United States, 1970-98

The paper seeks to identify common features in the fertility patterns of the English-speaking world and provide a model basis for comparison of fertility between countries and over time. Attention is focused on the heterogeneity within the fertility patterns of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, similar to that reported earlier for the UK and the Irish Republic. The recent age-specific fertility patterns of these countries display a marked 'bulge' in fertility of women under age 25. A mixture model with two-component Hadwiger functions provides a suitable fit. The heterogeneity thus suggested is related to the proportion of births outside marriage. Additionally, there is some evidence that, in the United States, and lesser extent in New Zealand, this heterogeneity in fertility patterns may be explained by ethnic difference in the timing and number of births.     

Rising prices,financial statements and fundamental research

Adequate consideration cannot be given to the subject of inflation accounting without a rigorous reappraisal of the nature and usefulness of published financial statements. It is argued that much fundamental research is a necessary prerequisite for the evaluation of methods of accounting in a period of inflation. Such research should begin with a consideration of the purposes to be served by the publication of financial statements. A framework is presented for such fundamental research and the results of some preliminary work outlined to assess the usefulness of financial statements in providing information to assist investors to make investment decisions. The use of financial statements by investors for this purpose is one of a number of possible objectives for financial statements.     

Manufacturing productivity

The general theory of engineering systems suggests that to produce desired order (to make a machine that works, to reduce the entropy, or even to improve productivity) the agent needs access to sources of (i) information, or useful messages; (ii) energy, or motivation; (iii) resources, including skills. A manufacturing economy, being an engineering system, obeys the same rules, so that an objective examination of 11 of them may be instructive. Since Belgium has no native energy and very few native resources, her post-1968 success in raising her productivity suggests significant improvement in her information systems. The author suggests what this improvement may have been.     

Economic lot disposition policies for single attribute sampling plans

Traditionally, single sampling plans have provided but two possible lot disposition policies, either to (1) accept or reject and screen, or to (2) accept or reject and scrap. This is particularly true of statistical designs. Economically based plans, however, provide a framework wherein several lot disposition policies may be invoked in accordance with estimated lot quality. This paper illustrates how such designs may be realized.     

The nature of action learning

Action Learning has developed to such an extent that there is now a demand to ‘know’ what it is. There is one way, and one way alone, of getting to ‘know’ what action learning is, and that is by doing it. For those who most clamour to ‘know’ what something might be are usually the victims of an educational system that leaves the vast majority who pass through it ignorant of the meaning of the verb to ‘know’ .... If, for example, I am asked “Do you know that woman?”, it is most probable that the questioner does not ‘know’ what he is asking me. Does he mean “Do I know her name? Or where she lives? Or am I able to introduce him to her? Or what she does for a living? Or do I recognise her by sight? Or have I been to bed with her? And, if so, what progress did I make?...” Thus, with action learning: “Have I read a book about it? Or attended a seminar at which somebody was trying to sell places on an action learning programme? Or visited a set of participants meeting as part of such a programme? Or tried to organise real persons tackling real problems in real time, and trying thereby to learn with and from each other? Or been an active participant myself in such a programme?...” To ‘know’ what action learning is, one must have been responsibly involved in it; since this cannot have been done merely by reading about action learning, it is impossible in this, or any other, note to convey more than the vaguest impression of what this educational approach may be. The day action learning becomes explicable in words alone will be the day to abandon the practice of it.     

Exchange curves for fixing batch quantities

The problem considered is that of choosing batch quantities to minimize costs, subject to the constraints that neither overall set-up costs nor overall set-up time can be increased beyond certain limits. Theoretical and graphical solutions are obtained for two possible formulations of the problem, and a simple practical procedure is suggested.     

Management,productivity and risk—The way ahead

Any world in transition is not short of things to argue about and we are now in transition. How our arguments are settled, whatsoever may be the virtue of the settlements, may be important. It has recently been suggested, for example, that 10 British governments have made over thirty fiscal interventions in the conduct of manufacturing industry since the Second World War, in addition to such general economic encouragements as tinkering with the minimum lending rate and the exchange value of the currency. A few of these ups-and-downs are the result of policies argued about during general election campaigns, to be sure, but even they, as well as all the others, are largely based on the advice of experts of one kind or another. But when we ask ourselves from where these experts seek the foundations of their advice, we discover a professional world no less short of its internal dissensions; when successive governments take sides with the different schools of experts, we may expect to find our transitional world also in violent oscillation. Expert controversy then may become mere intellectual brawling; this can be noticed within the professions and even lead to some soul searching.... As Johnson observed, after his efforts to secure the reprieve of a well-known preacher had failed: “Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in fortnight, it concentrates his attention wonderfully”. There is much concentrating of the attention just now. But we need to ask what to concentrate it on; nothing is as bad as the ill-conceived plan efficiently carried out, with its insistence on answering the wrong questions rather than in identifying the right ones. In the regenerative confusion of these iron times, our first need is to recognise the most discriminating questions obscured beneath the distractions of constant change; it is a need no less imperative for a profession like operational research than for the most quick-witted and evasive of party politicians. The doubts thrown on the credentials of our trade by Russell Ackoff's two recent papers are no more than the sentiment of the music hall song: “All dressed up but nowhere to go!” It is, in other words, easy to arm oneself with technique—indeed, with an arsenal of different techniques—but much more difficult to know what to do with it. There is no general theory of search, because if you do not know what you are looking for you do not know how to sample your experience. You must therefore start to guess. Decisions about the future, whether or not taken on the advice of experts, call for intelligent conjecture (if they are to be thought out) or just for simple guesswork (if they need not be). But since experts do not like risking their reputations, they are averse to guessing; they prefer to bank on the certainties of the elapsed past rather than to grope blindfold into the future. This paper suggests that action learning may be one means of concentrating attention upon the questions dying to be asked.