The Future Of Economic Design

This collection of essays represents responses by over eighty scholars to an unusual request: give your high level assessment of the field of economic design, as broadly construed. Where do we come from? Where do we go from here? The book editors invited short, informal reflections expressing deeply felt but hard to demonstrate opinions, unsupported speculation, and controversial views of a kind one might not normally risk submitting for review. The contributors – both senior researchers who have shaped the field and promising, younger researchers – responded with a diverse collection of provocative pieces, including: retrospective assessments or surveys of the field; opinion papers; reflections on critical points for the development of the discipline; proposals for the immediate future; "science fiction"; and many more. The readers should have fun reading these unusual pieces – as much as the contributors enjoyed writing them.

Engineers often find themselves tasked with the difficult challenge of developing a design that is both technically and economically feasible. A sharply focused, how-to book, Engineering Economics and Economic Design for Process Engineers provides the tools and methods to resolve design and economic issues. It helps you integrate technical and economic decision making, creating more profit and growth for your organization. The book puts methods that are simple, fast, and inexpensive within easy reach. Author Thane Brown sets the stage by explaining the engineer’s role in the creation of economically feasible projects. He discusses the basic economics of projects — how they are funded, what kinds of investments they require, how revenues, expenses, profits, and risks are interrelated, and how cash flows into and out of a company. In the engineering economics section of the book, Brown covers topics such as present and future values, annuities, interest rates, inflation, and inflation indices. He details how to create order-of-magnitude and study grade estimates for the investments in a project and how to make study grade production cost estimates. Against this backdrop, Brown explores a unique scheme for producing an Economic Design. He demonstrates how using the Economic Design Model brings increased economic thinking and rigor into the early parts of design, the time in a project’s life when its cost structure is being set and when the engineer’s impact on profit is greatest. The model emphasizes three powerful new tools that help you create a comprehensive design option list. When the model is used early in a project, it can drastically lower both capital and production costs. The book’s uniquely industrial focus presents topics as they would happen in a real work situation. It shows you how to combine technical and economic decision making to create economically optimum designs and increase your impact on profit and growth, and, therefore, your importance to your organization. Using these time-tested techniques, you can design processes that cost less to build and operate, and improve your company’s profit.

A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book for 2011 With the British Industrial Revolution, part of the world's population started to experience extraordinary economic growth—leading to enormous gaps in wealth and living standards between the industrialized West and the rest of the world. This pattern of divergence reversed after World War II, and now we are midway through a century of high and accelerating growth in the developing world and a new convergence with the advanced countries—a trend that is set to reshape the world. Michael Spence, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, explains what happened to cause this dramatic shift in the prospects of the five billion people who live in developing countries. The growth rates are extraordinary, and continuing them presents unprecedented challenges in governance, international coordination, and ecological sustainability. The implications for those living in the advanced countries are great but little understood. Spence clearly and boldly describes what's at stake for all of us as he looks ahead to how the global economy will develop over the next fifty years. The Next Convergence is certain to spark a heated debate how best to move forward in the post-crisis period and reset the balance between national and international economic interests, and short-term fixes and long-term sustainability.

Engineers often find themselves tasked with the difficult challenge of developing a design that is both technically and economically feasible. A sharply focused, how-to book, Engineering Economics and Economic Design for Process Engineers provides the tools and methods to resolve design and economic issues. It helps you integrate technical and economic decision making, creating more profit and growth for your organization. The book puts methods that are simple, fast, and inexpensive within easy reach. Author Thane Brown sets the stage by explaining the engineer’s role in the creation of economically feasible projects. He discusses the basic economics of projects — how they are funded, what kinds of investments they require, how revenues, expenses, profits, and risks are interrelated, and how cash flows into and out of a company. In the engineering economics section of the book, Brown covers topics such as present and future values, annuities, interest rates, inflation, and inflation indices. He details how to create order-of-magnitude and study grade estimates for the investments in a project and how to make study grade production cost estimates. Against this backdrop, Brown explores a unique scheme for producing an Economic Design. He demonstrates how using the Economic Design Model brings increased economic thinking and rigor into the early parts of design, the time in a project’s life when its cost structure is being set and when the engineer’s impact on profit is greatest. The model emphasizes three powerful new tools that help you create a comprehensive design option list. When the model is used early in a project, it can drastically lower both capital and production costs. The book’s uniquely industrial focus presents topics as they would happen in a real work situation. It shows you how to combine technical and economic decision making to create economically optimum designs and increase your impact on profit and growth, and, therefore, your importance to your organization. Using these time-tested techniques, you can design processes that cost less to build and operate, and improve your company’s profit.

This book discusses imaginary future generations and how current decision-making will influence those future generations. Markets and democracies focus on the present and therefore tend to make us forget that we are living in the present, with ancestors preceding and descendants succeeding us. Markets are excellent devices to equate supply and demand in the short term, but not for allocating resources between current and future generations, since future generations do not exist yet. Democracy is also not “applicable” for future generations, since citizens vote for candidates who will serve members of their, i.e., the current, generation. In order to overcome these shortcomings, the authors discusses imaginary future generations and future ministries in the context of current decision-making in fields such as the environment, urban management, forestry, water management, and finance. The idea of imaginary future generations comes from the Native American Iroquois, who had strong norms that compelled them to incorporate the interests of people seven generations ahead when making decisions.

Some of the finest and most recent research in economic and political design is presented. Among the authors are several prominent academics as well as many new and promising researchers. They investigate social choice and electoral systems, auctions, matching, bargaining, coalitional stability and efficiency, regulation, the design of rights, mechanisms, games, hierarchies and information. The book is bound to become a standard reference as a collection displaying where we are and where we are going in a broad spectrum of areas in economic design.

The Future of Design Methodology gives a holistic overview of perspectives for design methodology, addresses trends for developing a powerful methodical support for design practice and provides a starting point for future design research. The chapters are written by leading scientists from around the world, who have great expertise in design methodology, as well as the farsightedness needed to develop design methodology further. The Future of Design Methodology is a detailed contribution to consolidated design methodology and design research. Instead of articulating the views of one scientist, it provides a comprehensive collection of perspectives and visions. The editor highlights the substantial deficiencies and problems of the current design methodology and summarizes the authors’ findings to draw future-oriented conclusions. The comprehensive overview of the status of design methodology given in The Future of Design Methodology will help enhance the individual scientific development of junior researchers, while the authoritative perspectives on future design methodology will challenge the views of experts. It is suitable for readers working in a wide range of design fields, such as design methodology, engineering design and industrial design.

Why the United States lags behind other industrialized countries in sharing the benefits of innovation with workers and how we can remedy the problem. The United States has too many low-quality, low-wage jobs. Every country has its share, but those in the United States are especially poorly paid and often without benefits. Meanwhile, overall productivity increases steadily and new technology has transformed large parts of the economy, enhancing the skills and paychecks of higher paid knowledge workers. What’s wrong with this picture? Why have so many workers benefited so little from decades of growth? The Work of the Future shows that technology is neither the problem nor the solution. We can build better jobs if we create institutions that leverage technological innovation and also support workers though long cycles of technological transformation. Building on findings from the multiyear MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, the book argues that we must foster institutional innovations that complement technological change. Skills programs that emphasize work-based and hybrid learning (in person and online), for example, empower workers to become and remain productive in a continuously evolving workplace. Industries fueled by new technology that augments workers can supply good jobs, and federal investment in R&D can help make these industries worker-friendly. We must act to ensure that the labor market of the future offers benefits, opportunity, and a measure of economic security to all.