Josselin Droff, a researcher at the Chair, will be taking part in Signal over Noise, podcast from the Centre de documentation de l'École militaire (CDEM). In it, he presents his article on the geographical reorganisation of the Maintenance in Operational Condition (MCO) function of defence materials. Entitled «The organization of the Defense support system: an economic geography perspective», it is the result of collaboration with Catherine Baumont and Amaury Barra (University of Burgundy).
Against a backdrop of tight budget constraints and the rising cost of defence equipment MCO, the article proposes to a formalised analysis framework in which a public planner organises the maintenance of defence equipment. The discussion is based on a balance of forces between agglomeration and spatial dispersion. On the one hand, economies of scale reduce support costs and encourage the concentration of MCO activities. But on the other hand, taking account of the space constraint leads to dispersion linked to transport costs and social operating costs (SOC).
This trade-off between economies of scale and distance-related costs, which underpins spatial economics, finds an original field of application in the literature on defence economics through the case of defence equipment MCO.
Presented by Anaïs Meunier, this episode looks back at the conference devoted to the special issue of Defence and Peace Economics.
For more details on this subject, please consult the Newsletter N°4 the Chair in Defence Economics or the doctoral thesis in economics from Josselin Droff.
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