Economics Insights @ CBS

Creative ideation is a highly complex process, which is difficult to formalize and control. Evidently, even in a complex thinking context certain patterns of creativity may emerge. Relying on such observed patterns may help in "organizing" the creative process by promoting routes that have been proven to lead to productive ideas and avoiding those that do not.

We describe effective time partitioning heuristics for dynamic lot-sizing problems in multiitem and multilocation production/distribution systems. In a time-partitioning heuristic, the complete horizon of (say) N periods, is partitioned into smaller intervals. An instance of the problem is solved, to optimality, on each of these intervals, and the resulting solution coalesced into a solution for the complete horizon. The intervals are selected to be of a size which permits the use of exact and effective solution methods (e.g., branch-and-bound methods).

The author argues that trade liberalization must be balanced in agenda, process and outcomes, including not only sectors in which developed countries have a comparative advantage, like financial services, but also those in which developing countries have a special interest, like agriculture and construction services. Account must be taken of the marked disadvantage that developing countries have in participating meaningfully in negotiations.