Economic analysis for business decisions

The traditional meeting place of the economic analyst and the business executive has been a battleground: the Congressional hearing, the courtroom, or the debate platform. It is a compara tively recent phenomenon for members of each group to infiltrate into the jobs of the other and for both parties to find profit in the interchange of ideas.

When it comes to matters of public policy within a market economy-taxation, foreign trade, antitrust, or labor relations there still remains a wide gulf between the views of most econ omists and those of most business executives. But when it comes to analysis of internal operations of the business enterprise, the ideological barriers seem to have crumbled away and a fruit ful area has opened up, an area sometimes known as "engineering economics" or "operations research" or "management science."

This volume is intended as a survey and an introduction to the new and rapidly changing area that lies between the disciplines of economics and those of industrial administration. I have tried to concentrate on those topics possessing an essential unity with each other and with the traditional subject matter of micro economics: the logic of choice. Four chapters deal with linear programming, two with integer programming, and three with inventory models and sequential decision theory.