Andrew P. Sage’s research while affiliated with George Mason University and other places

The global financial system is moving, slowly, toward a new global reserve currency. The US dollar has been dominant since 1948 and implementation of the Bretton Woods Agreement. However, there has been a growing movement to replace the US dollar with an expanded SDR. Having a single global reserve currency will require development of new information, knowledge and system management architectures that are capable of assisting in providing stability for the new reserve currency. This paper sets forth an analytical framework for development of a detailed mission statement of such an architecture based upon a modified structured analysis approach and an associated IDEF0 activity diagram for the proposed architecture. Stability for this new global reserve currency is a basic design need for this new systems management architecture. Without stability, a global reserve currency will have difficulty in becoming the major source of an appropriate global payment system. An appropriate global payment system is one in which it leads to stability in in the financial markets. And, in the absence of strong governance, no global payment system can be assured of being stable.

Interoperability is a major concern for many organizations. For organizations to work effectively, the information systems supporting an organization must work together to realize the full potential of built-in capabilities. Furthermore, organizations are not isolated islands. They need to work with external entities, therefore the systems of an organization need to work together with the systems of other organizations. Accomplishing interoperability among various organizations is a difficult and costly problem, both in terms of time and money. Achieving interoperability is difficult because organizational systems are often conceived, specified, architected, designed, built and managed independently of one another. This is further complicated by the rapidly changing nature of information technology. Over the last few decades, many approaches have been taken to manage and ideally solve interoperability problems. Specifications of common standards, technical guidance, and common development processes and tools are among the most tried approaches to this end. Though some interoperability improvements have been made, these attempts have often not resulted in successfully interoperable systems. Today, interoperability still remains a major concern. This paper addresses the interoperability problem by improving interoperability assessments of Systems of Systems SoS and Families of Systems FoS. A precise and easy to use method for assessing a system's interoperability with other systems at early stages of system development will allow systems engineers and associated professionals to make informed decisions for better interoperability.

The broad goals of cost-benefit analysis and cost-benefit assessment are to provide procedures for the estimation and evaluation of the benefits and the costs associated with alternative courses of action, including their analysis and assessment. This chapter introduces some necessary preliminary concepts. Included among these are various subjects from engineering economics, including net present worth (NPW), rate of return, depreciation, inflation, opportunity costs, portfolios of projects, and discount rates. Then, the chapter presents a more formal definition of cost-benefit analysis. Following this, it discusses the role of consumer and producer surplus, shadow pricing, and valuation of unmarketed goods in cost-benefit analysis. Finally, the chapter presents a brief discussion of cost-effectiveness analysis. The generic principles and concepts of cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses are equally applicable in the private and public sectors. cost-benefit analysis; industrial economics; inflation (monetary)

This chapter examines some elementary concepts from the microeconomic theory of the consumer. It introduces the concept of a utility function with which to express the satisfaction or value the consumer obtains from alternative goods and services. A number of axioms of utility theory are postulated to model a rational consumer. The chapter examines the necessary conditions for a consumer to maximize utility subject to a constraint of a fixed budget income and with given prices for goods and services. The results of this optimization are important in that we obtain the consumer demand function for goods and services in terms of their price and the consumer budget or income for goods and services. Finally, the chapter establishes a number of important ancillary concepts using the necessary conditions for optimum consumer behavior. It obtains some sensitivity results concerning optimum consumer demand functions. consumer behaviour; microeconomics

Half Title Wiley Series in Systems Engineering and Management Title Copyright Contents Preface

This chapter provides an overview of some of contemporary issues in the economic systems. These issues are such that the best economic concepts and practices are only just emerging and many ideas are still subject to substantive debates. Among the subjects that the author briefly discusses are evolutionary economics, path dependence and network effects, intellectual capital, value of information, and investing in humans. industrial economics; industrial property

This chapter considers investments that can be staged such that decisions can be made at each stage whether or not to continue investment for the next stage. This multistage approach provides decision makers with considerably flexibility. It first elaborates the nature of options. This includes the logic of options, option pricing models, and computational methods, with emphasis on Black-Scholes formulations. Strategic metrics for characterizing the worth of investments are then discussed. Investment decision making then becomes the focus, including the notions of investment portfolios and discussion of a wealth of investment case studies. Finally, the construct of value-centered investing is elaborated where the core notion is option-based strategic thinking about the contingent needs of an enterprise. investment; pricing

This chapter examines some elementary concepts from production theory or the theory of the firm. It introduces the concept of a production function and a number of economic concepts concerning production. The chapter starts with the discussion of production with the simplest case of a single product firm. Then, it briefly mentions how the results of a single-product firm can be extended to include the multiproduct firm, where the same firm generally produces a number of goods. The chapter also briefly examines the fundamental or classic problem of the firm and used some elementary optimization concepts to illustrate how, in some very simple cases, profit maximization can be obtained. industrial economics; microeconomics