Economic Systems Analysis and Assessment

An Authoritative Introduction to a Major Subject in Systems Engineering and Management

This important volume fills the need for a textbook on the fundamentals of economic systems analysis and assessment, illustrating their vital role in systems engineering and systems management. Providing extensive coverage on key topics, it assumes no prior background in mathematics or economics in order to comprehend the material.

The book is comprised of five major parts:

• Microeconomics: a concise overview that covers production and the theory of the firm; theory of the consumer; market equilibria and market imperfections; and normative or welfare economics, including imperfect competition effects and consumer and producer surplus

• Program Management Economics: discusses economic valuation of programs and projects, including investment rates of return; cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis; earned value management; cost structures and estimation of program costs and schedules; strategic and tactical pricing issues; and capital investment and options

• Cost Estimation: reviews cost-estimation technologies involving precedented and unprecedented development, commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software, software reuse, application generators, and fourth-generation languages

• Strategic Investments in an Uncertain World: addresses alternative methods for valuation of firms including Stern Stewart's EVA, Holt's CFROI, and various competing methodologies

• Contemporary Perspectives: covers ongoing extensions to theory and practice that enable satisfactory treatment of the increasing returns to scale, network effects, and path-dependent issues generally associated with contemporary ultra-large-scale telecommunications and information networks

Also discussed in this comprehensive text are normative or welfare economics and behavioral economics; COCOMO I and II and COSYSMO as examples of a cost model; and options-based valuation models and valuation of information technology intensive enterprises.

Economic Systems Analysis and Assessment serves as an ideal textbook for senior undergraduate and first-year graduate courses in economic systems analysis and assessment, as well as a valuable reference for engineers and managers involved with information technology intensive systems, professional economists, cost analysts, investment evaluators, and systems engineers.