Decision Making Under Conditions of Extreme Resource Scarcity : Introduction

Abstract

This paper arises from our interest in the problems of planning in small countries. In a previous paper of ours, we emphasized those aspects of the problem that have to do with the openness of a system and its implications for planning. We found a relationship between the size of a country and the openness of the system that made possible the use of the system.
The main conclusions of this paper are the following: the use of openness as a surrogate measure of size was found to make possible the use of openness as a proxy for size, and allowed us to proceed to the analysis of its implications for development planning. The main conclusions of that work can be summarized as follows: