20年来在维修与可靠性工程专业推行校外读研的经验

大部分从事维修与可靠性专业的人员在其工作期间都受过短期课目培训。不过，许多人认为，具有评定意义的正规学习对他们的工作和所在公司来说，会在那些具有实用价值的技能和知识方面得到进一步提升。从20世纪80年代中期开始，澳大利亚莫纳什大学（Monash University）那些不能到校内上课的工程师们，开设了维修管理专业的研究生课程。后来又开设了可靠性工程的课程，1998年这两个课程合并成为了硕士学位课程。现在全世界已有几百名学生从这个专业毕业。随着在网络增强式教学方面的进展，这个项目有了重大的发展，2006年学习这个课程的学生已经遍及五大洲19个国家。丈中介绍这个课程的发展和演变以及一些经验教训，同时也列举出了毕业生们从中所能得到若干益处。     

JOB DESIGN AND PRODUCTIVITY

Six years ago a small research unit was established at the Management Centre of the University of Bradford, with the purpose of investigating the effects of changes in job design and job content on worker productivity. Since that time a number of studies have been completed, and the philosophy and strategy of the programme of research have changed. This paper describes the evolution of the project and summarizes the major results obtained up to the present date.     

An experimental investigation of soft price caps in uniform price auction markets for wholesale electricity

This paper presents the results from an auction experiment using industry professionals and student participants who compete in a simulated wholesale market for electricity. Motivated by the intervention by FERC in response to the “meltdown” of the California spot market, we investigate the effect of including a “soft” price cap in a uniform price auction as a means of mitigating high prices. When prices are driven above the soft cap, offer curves become flat, in contrast to the hockey stick shape observed in a typical uniform price auction for electricity. This flat offer curve leads to market prices that are relatively insensitive to both generation costs and demand reductions.      

Small is beautiful — the key concept for successful irrigation development∗

Generally small schemes are more beneficial than large schemes, with fewer management and money problems. An attempt is made to analyse the components of large and small irrigation developments in order to expose and compare the causes of success or failure.     

Memoryless Reigns of the “Sons of Heaven”

Human lifetimes have increasing failure rates; as people age (beyond early childhood) they are more likely to die. Viewing the succession of Chinese Emperors as a statistical ensemble we show that, unlike lifetimes, their reigns ceased at a constant rate for over two millennia, unaffected by elapsed time. In fact reign lengths of the “Sons of Heaven”, as the Chinese Emperors were known, followed a memoryless exponential distribution with a 10-year half-life. Becoming emperor not only influenced the duration of remaining life, but length of rule was independent of age at ascent. We propose an explanation for the observed exponentiality using asymptotic results from the theory of stationary stochastic processes.     

FINANCIAL LIBERALISATION, CONSUMPTION AND WEALTH EFFECTS IN SEVEN OECD COUNTRIES

We estimate the impact of financial liberalisation on consumption in seven major industrial countries, and find a marked shift in behaviour, notably a decline in short‐run income elasticities and a rise in short‐run wealth and interest rate elasticities. A corollary is that consumption equations estimated over both pre‐ and post‐liberalisation regimes may be misleading, and either a form of testing as presented here or a shortening of the sample period may be appropriate for accurate forecasting and simulation.     

The Economic Puzzle of Oskar Schindler:

ABSTRACT The popular film Schindler's List is a cinematic portrayal of Oskar Schindler , the German industrialist who rescued more than a thousand of his Jewish workers during the Holocaust . While the film has generated much debate over the character's motivations, the historical Oskar Schindler can be viewed as an economic actor who made several choices. Examined together, these various choices make an excellent case for amenity potential , a concept from the work of Harold Demsetz which explains how one's control over a firm's resources gives one opportunities to use those resources for whatever purposes one sees fit, subject to legal and market constraints . Applying amenity potential to the economic puzzle of Schindler's choices reveals how and why he was able to make various choices which followed the letter of the law in Nazi Society, while violating its spirit.