Establishing Maintenance Resource Levels Using Selective Maintenance

We address the performance of a repairable system that is required to perform a sequence of equally spaced, identical missions with breaks between missions. The system is series-parallel in structure, and component repair can only be performed during breaks between missions. Due to limitations on maintenance resources, it may be impossible to make all necessary repairs before the next mission. Such situations require the use of selective maintenance, the process of identifying the subset of maintenance actions to perform from a set of desirable maintenance actions. We build upon previous research in selective maintenance by addressing decisions related to establishing capacities for the limited maintenance resources. We model mission-to-mission changes in maintenance resource capacity, and we develop a methodology for establishing constant resource capacities for a sequence of missions. Finally, we develop a methodology for integrating redundancy allocation and maintenance resource allocation decisions.     

Dynamic specification of consumer expenditure on non-durables and services in Austria

Zusammenfassung Jüngste Fortschritte in der ökonometrischen Theorie führten zu erneutem Interesse an einem der am häufigsten analysierten Themenkreise der quantitativen Ökonomie: dem Zusammenhang zwischen Konsumausgaben und verfügbaren Einkommen. Entsprechende Tests ergaben, daß die Konsumausgaben für nichtdauerhafte Güter und Dienstleistungen und das verfügbare Einkommen kointegriert sind. Ausgehend von dieser Tatsache wurde in mehreren Schritten eine Konsumfunktion abgeleitet, die neben zufriedenstellenden statistischen Eigenschaften eine plausible ökonomische Interpretation zuläßt und eine interessante, mit den beobachteten Daten konsistente dynamische Struktur aufweist.

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Helpful suggestions for improvement by M. Deistler, D. F. Hendry, and J. Wolters are gratefully acknowledged.     

Marion G. Müller,International University Bremen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Kommentar zu Beiers Beitrag

Ohne ZusammenfassungGerhard Scherhorn ist Professor für Konsumtheorie und Verbraucherpolitik an der Universität Hohenheim, Postfach 106, D-7000 Stuttgart 70.     

Gernot Wersig 60 Jahre

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The goal of consumer advice: Transparency or autonomy?

To improve the transparency of consumer markets by means of information is an important task but it cannot be served efficiently by consumer advice. The genuine aim of consumer advice is described here as promoting consumer autonomy by, first, decision counselling and related means and, second, coordinating consumer interests. The paper is centred on two main issues: the responsibility of suppliers of consumer goods to meet the consumers' information needs, and the potential and chance for consumers to progress towards a higher degree of autonomy.     

Contribution of financial market segments at different stages of development: Transition,cohesion and mature economies compared

What is the impact of financial sector segments at different stages of development? We apply a production function approach to investigate the impact of the credit, bond and stock segments in nine EU-accession countries over early years of transition (1996–2000) and compare these to mature market economies and to countries at intermediate stage. We find that the transfer mechanisms differ over the development cycle (from bond markets to educational attainment to labor participation) and that financial market segments with links to the public sector (but not stock markets) contributed to stability and growth in transition economies.     

Innovations in the international financial markets

The appearance of the international financial markets is changing rapidly; new instruments are constantly being hatched and marketed, often with considerable success. However, the ingenuity of the markets does not always meet with applause; the banking supervisory authorities and central banks view the rapid pace of innovation with concern and the banking community also displays occasional unease. On balance, do the positive aspects outweigh the negative ones?