Engineering Economist articles from March 1996

Engineering Economist archives from March 1996

AnMod and DecSim: two models of sequences of capital rationing decisions and their use in evaluating capital budgeting policies.
March 22, 1996... INTRODUCTION Several investment decision models have received varying degrees of attention since E.L. Grant introduced the concept of an engineering economy study in 1930 [3]. They include: Wald's expected value model in 1950 [20]; Joel Dean's...

Costs and productivity estimation in computer engineering economics.
March 22, 1996... INTRODUCTION The use of models in software engineering can offer developers and project managers technical evaluation and management tools which would enable them to improve the technical quality of their products, as well as increase human...

Capital investment under uncertainty: calculating the present value of the depreciation tax shield when the tax rate is stochastic.
March 22, 1996... INTRODUCTION In most textbook treatments of capital budgeting there are usually extensive discussions of how tax laws effect the construction of cash flows. For example, Brigham et al. (1991), Van Horne et al. (1985), Ross et al. (1993) and...

Ranking reversal of projects with different risks and lives.
March 22, 1996... INTRODUCTION Among academicians in finance, economics and decision sciences, the net present value (NPV) criterion is the recommended approach to decision making when mutually exclusive projects are being compared for adoption. The standard...

Optimal termination and the IRR revisited. (internal rate of return)
March 22, 1996... INTRODUCTION The internal rate of return has been the subject of an extensive literature. Keynes, Hicks, Arrow, and Sen are among the most distinguished contributors, but many others have written in this area. Cannaday, Colwell and Paley [2],...

On the error from compounding with the arithmetic mean interest rate.
March 22, 1996... INTRODUCTION The link between geometric and arithmetic means is discussed in the literature on financial indices under various market conditions (see Brennan and Schwartz 1985, Rothstein 1972, and Modest and Sundaresan 1983). The effect of...

Maintainability: A Key to Effective Serviceability and Maintenance Management.
March 22, 1996... This is an excellent book on maintainability as opposed to maintenance. So many of the maintainability references that I have seen in the past tend to concentrate on the maintenance of the system and not the design of maintenance into the system....

Economics of Control Improvement.
March 22, 1996... This book is an Independent Learning Module (ILM) for independent self-study published by the Instrument Society of America (ISA). The ILM System is comprised of a number of modules on such topics as control principles and techniques, fundamental...

Techniques for Capital Expenditure Analysis.
March 22, 1996... This text is the 24th century in COST ENGINEERING, a series of reference books and textbooks edited by Dr. Kenneth K. Humphreys. Both authors have long careers in the field of Cost Engineering and both are past presidents of the American...