In the midst of her travels as Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright decided to venture off the standard diplomatic tour and visit the local market in Bakhara, Uzbekistan. “For all intents and purposes it could have been in the fifteenth century,” she recalled. “It was a big camel market, with rugs that looked liked they had been hanging there for a long time. Dust and all that.”
Topic:
Diplomacy, Government, International Political Economy, and Science and Technology
In 2002, the Aspen Institute Conference on Telecommunications Policy deviated from its traditional single annual gathering in Aspen by holding two meetings—one on spectrum policy and the other on broader telecommunications issues. The first convening, held last spring at the Aspen Wye River campus, focused on reforming spectrum policy; a subsequent meeting was held in the usual August time slot. This summer meeting went beyond the issue of spectrum policy to delve into more pressing issues surrounding an industry experiencing more than its of share of troubles. This report is a synthesis of both convenings, with an emphasis on the larger context provided by the summer colloquy.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Government, International Political Economy, and Science and Technology
During the 1990s the United Kingdom experienced large and sudden exchange rate movements that had no apparent impact on overall consumer prices. This paper shows that the stability of U.K. consumer prices was made possible in part by offsetting movements in the price-cost margins of foreign exporters and in part by offsetting price-cost margins in the U.K. distribution sector. At the same time, U.K. manufacturers experienced margin swings in the opposite direction, largely due to their role as exporters. Thus, sterling depreciation boosted the profits of U.K. manufacturers and squeezed the profits of U.K. distributors, while sterling appreciation had the opposite effects.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
Sea basing is a critical capability for the United States in a world where flexible, quick-response military action will be required in areas far from fixed bases available or suitable for American military use. The seabase replaces or augments the fixed, in-theater airports and seaports, on which past military operations have focused and depended, with a maneuverability facility at sea - a mobile base of operations, command center, logistics node and transportation hub. A commander can place a seabase where and when he chooses to exploit enemy weaknesses and employ the element of surprise, confusing enemy defensive preparations. A seabase can be a center for reconstitution and redeployment of forces in succeeding stages of complex operations.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Development, and Science and Technology
U.S. national security leaders face a complex, dynamic set of demands in protecting the interests of the United States and its allies. Three key trends shape the nature and capability of the military forces required to meet these demands: 1. The limited ability to predict when, where, and under what conditions we will need to commit U.S. military forces, particularly for smaller-scale contingencies; 2. The need for forces that enjoy dominant superiority over potential adversaries, not simply an incremental advantage over an aggregate set of threats; and 3. The rapid development and global availability of information technology (IT). Taken together, these trends underscore the need for enhanced joint capabilities.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Development, and Science and Technology
In the terms of reference, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics directed the task force “to conduct a comprehensive study of the ends and means of precision compellence, or the nuanced use of force, in concert with coalition partners, to achieve political, economic and moral change in countries affecting US interests.” Real-world events have since underscored the need for such a study; indeed, the U.S. military applied key elements of a measured, nuanced approach in both the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. We are pleased to note this evolution in operations and a parallel evolution in the thinking of the combatant commands and Services. Because of this evolution, it is no longer as necessary as it once was to sell the fundamental objectives of what we term here the discriminate use of force (DUF).
Topic:
International Relations, Defense Policy, and Science and Technology
The Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program was conceived as an international acquisition program in order to attract financial investment and technological innovation from partner countries, as well as to partner early with governments whose military Services were likely users of this state-of-the-art coalition forces platform.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Economics, Industrial Policy, and Science and Technology
This is the second 21st century Defense Science Board report on military training. The report itself has a training goal: instruct and convince the acquisition and personnel communities to recognize instinctively that (1) military proficiency is as dependent on the warriors who operate weapon systems as it is on the weapon system technology, and (2) a superb way to waste personnel or system acquisition money is to ignore training, or to tacitly allow training to pay the bills for acquisition or personnel system flaws in those more measurable arenas.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Development, and Science and Technology
We study whether aggregation residuals in U.S. private investment in information technology (IT) exhibit a predictable pattern that is consistent with Hicks' composite-good theorem and that may be used for forecasting. To determine whether one can extract such a pattern, we apply the general-to-specific strategy developed by Krolzig and Hendry (2001). This strategy combines ordinary least squares with a computer-automated algorithm that selects a specification based on coefficients' statistical significance, residual properties, and parameter constancy. Then, we derive the testable implications from Hicks' theorem and evaluate them with econometric formulations; we find qualified support for these implications. Having obtained these formulations, we evaluate their ex-post predictive accuracy and compare it to that of an autoregressive model. The key finding is that ignoring movement in relative prices results in a loss of information for predicting aggregation residuals.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
Time is money, and distance matters. We model the interaction of these truisms, and show the implications for global specialization and trade: products where timely delivery is important will be produced near the source of final demand, where wages will be higher as a result. In the model, timely delivery is important because it allows retailers to respond to fluctuating final demand without holding costly inventories, and timely delivery is only possible from nearby locations. Using a unique dataset that allows us to measure the retail demand for timely delivery, we show that the sources of US apparel imports have shifted in the way predicted by the model, with products where timeliness matters increasingly imported from nearby countries.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology