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Did the expansion of democratic institutions play a role in determining central government spending behavior in the 19th and 20th centuries? The link between democracy and increased central government spending is well established for the post-Second World War period, but has never been explored during the first “wave of democracy” and its subsequent reversal, that is 1870–1938. The main contribution of this paper is the compilation of a dataset covering 24 countries over this period to begin to address this question. Utilizing various descriptive techniques, including panel data regressions, we explore correlations between central government spending and the institutional characteristics of regimes. We find that the data are consistent with the hypothesis that democracies have a broader need for legitimization than autocracies as various measures of democracy are associated with higher central government spending. Our results indicate that the extension of franchise had a slight positive impact on central government spending levels, as did a few of the other democracy variables. We also find that early liberal democracies spent less and monarchies more than other regimes; debt increases spending; and participation in the Gold Standard reduced government spending substantially.

The substantial resources devoted to warfare in modern times might explain the increasing relevance that military spending has acquired in social sciences. In this regard, the so-called defence economics has extensively studied the main determinants of military spending and its main consequences in terms of economic performance and institutional transformations. However, one of the main problems for comparative analysis on the causes and effects of military spending is the lack of long-term homogeneous and comparable data in international panel datasets. This paper contributes to fill in this gap by providing new military spending data on Spain from 1850 to 2009 based on NATO methodological criterion. It provides total military spending estimates as well as economic and administrative disaggregated figures for most of the period. These data allow reliable international comparisons while also providing new quantitative evidence to better understand the military history of Spain in modern times.

This paper aims to present an approach that two leading supply chain companies have used to identify and design alternative supply chain solutions according to their customers' demand chains.

The paper describes industry best practice.

The supplier of telecommunications equipment found that by deploying three different supply chains that corresponded to three types of customers' demand chains it could simultaneously improve customer satisfaction and effectiveness. The supplier of fasteners found it could serve its different industrial customers with essentially two supply chain designs.

This is a practical best practice description and does not aim to contribute to academic research. However, there are no academic contributions on procedures for supply chain re‐design according to customer demand chains. Thus, the best practice described in the paper implies a need for research on this type of supply chain customization.

Customer requirements and collaboration capabilities can be systematically taken into consideration in supply chain designs.

The paper presents a practical approach for taking both product characteristics and customer differences into account in supply chain re‐design.

The purpose of this paper is to propose demand‐supply chain representation as a tool to support economic organizing between original equipment manufacturers going downstream and customers considering how to better outsource maintenance and asset management.

This paper is a presentation of a representation tool using a design theory template.

The concept of demand visibility point and requirements penetration point can be used to describe different ways of economic organizing as interaction between demand and supply. The proposed representation scheme supports the identification of visibility‐based changes in economic organization, such as vendor‐managed inventory and reliability‐based maintenance services.

The paper is conceptual and requires further empirical work.

The representation tool can be used both by practitioners engaged in outsourcing maintenance and practitioners involved in the development of industrial service offerings.

The paper introduces demand‐supply chain representation to development of industrial service offerings and outsourcing of maintenance activities.

This paper aims to describe how performance in the project supply chain can be improved by implementing information technology solutions that track site installation and inventory.

The case study was initiated after observing unexpected problems and subsequent performance improvement in a very large project delivery. Personnel involved in the project were interviewed and project documentation was analyzed to identify the reasons for initial poor performance and the changes that lead to the observed improvement.

As the scale and complexity of a delivery project increases the role of accurate and robust tracking of installation work and inventory increases. Alignment between participants breaks down in the absence of reliable inventory tracking with potentially very adverse effects on project delivery operations. Introducing reliable inventory tracking can very quickly re‐align participants and improve overall performance in a telecom delivery project.

The findings are based on a case study, with particular characteristics: large number of dispersed installation sites, modular product, remote sensing. Topics for further research are suggested to assess the relevance of inventory tracking in different contexts.

The case shows how an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) can improve project delivery performance by investing in inventory tracking between inventory drop‐off and installation on the site.

Project delivery has received scarce attention in a supply chain management context. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge by showing how site inventory tracking affects performance and alignment of the whole project supply chain.