REPLY Age of material in a stock (SD6432)

[SDMAIL C.A.F.M. Grutters]

Posted by  "C.A.F.M. Grutters" <c.grutters at jur.ru.nl>

Jay W. Forrester's question: 

>> Can someone supply some examples of where the way of computing
>> age in a stock will alter the direction of policy
>> recommendations to improve the behavior of a system?

gave a number of interesting replies illustrating the relation age-of-stock 
and policy direction.

I would like to add an example of legal dynamics.

One important aspect of legal procedures is that one may appeal, i.e. go to a 
'higher judge', if the result of the procedure is not acceptable to one (or 
all) of the parties involved.

Such a request for an appeal, however, has to be filed within a certain period 
of time (for example 4 weeks). If such a request has not been filed within this 
period, it will be inadmissable.

This also - at least in a number of countries - works the other way around, 
meaning that if a certain administrative body waits too long deciding requests, 
it is automaticly assumed that the outcome is negative meaning that the 'appeal-
route' is opened. 

This implies that the existence of backlogs increases the possibility of exceeding 
a certain period of time-to-decide, and that means an increase of the number of  
'automatically' generated negative outcomes and therefore the number of appeals.

Knowledge about the age of the stock - or backlog - then is crucial to compute the 
number of expected appeals. In policy terms this implies that changing handling 
capacity at one level indirectly influences the size of the inflow at another (appeal) 
level.

Carolus Grütters
Centre for Migration Law
Faculty of Law
Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Posted by  "C.A.F.M. Grutters" <c.grutters at jur.ru.nl>
posting date  Sun, 22 Apr 2007 21:37:30 +0200