Any visit to the seashore will confirm that it is more difficult to build a large sandcastle if one locates the project too near the lapping waves of the ocean. The sandcastle may grow well initially, but eventually a rouge wave washes out some portion of the progress. It may be possible for the sandcastle to grow on net, so long as investment in building outpaces losses to the waves, but it mu...

This paper surveys and assesses the empirical literature that bears on the applicability of the theorem of proportionality, which asserts that depreciation is proportional to the outstanding capital stock. All available evidence shows that: a) the rates of depreciation and retirements vary from year to year in response to changes in conventional economic forces like utilization, maintenance and...

In this paper, a new method is proposed for estimating the depreciation rate of technological knowledge based on the analysis of technology cycle time (TCT). Patent citation data are used in an empirical analysis. The following features characterize the proposed TCT-based method: i) Estimation of the depreciation rate is measured by using the entire set of patents; and ii) The current approach ...

This paper presents a general framework to handle the optimal sizing of singlestage multi-product units incorporating demand uncertainty. This problem consists on the determination of the type, number of units and their capacities, chosen from a set of standard equipment sizes. The objective function is the profit expectation maximization, involving five components: i. revenue; ii. production c...

This paper undertakes an exploratory analysis of the inflationary dynamics within the Croatian economy over the period January 1992 December 1999. Recognizing the structural break in the inflationary process corresponding to the anti-inflationary stabilization program of October 1993, the analysis proceeds by estimating an augmented vector autoregressive (VAR) model of the log first-differences...

Effective radiation shielding is imperative to safe operation of modern Medical Cyclotrons producing large activities of short-lived radioisotopes on a commercial basis. Like the containment shielding of Medical Linear Accelerators (1), the optimal shielding design of Medical Cyclotrons demands a careful balance between the radiological, economical and often the sociopolitical factors. One is r...

Exchange market pressure (EMP) measures the pressure on a currency to depreciate. It adds to the actual depreciation a weighted combination of policy instruments used to ward off depreciation, such as interest rates and foreign exchange interventions, where the weights are their effectiveness. The key difficulty in the literature is how to identify these weights. We exploit the persistence of p...