ABSTRACT
This chapter presents various devices of model-building strategy and model use. It draws attention to publications containing such research reports, in economic theory and in empirical work in applied and policy analysis. The problem to be modelled is one in which an enterprise invests in some capacity in order to provide a product or service to be sold in each of several time-periods, with storage of the product or service from one period to another being technically infeasible. The art of model-building plays a significant role in optimisation analysis. This simple batch-size model requires a considerable number of assumptions, and thus it provides a good illustration of this aspect of the model-building art. The multi-period problem requires little in the way of formal optimisation technique, and may be used to illustrate alternative ways of reaching the optimal solution. The exploration of the dual problem has given considerable insight into the nature of the optimal solution to the primal.
