Book Description
"This book is the answer to hundreds of CIOs who have asked me how IT can be used to disrupt their market and change the rules of competition. If you live in a hypercompetitive world, CIOs will find this book an invaluable resource." -Richard A. D'Aveni, author of Hypercompetition "I wish Bernie Boar had written this book 20 years ago. And I wish every IT manager and architect had read it and placed his hand on it and sworn by it 20 years ago. Then we wouldn't be in the pickle we find ourselves in today!" -John A. Zachman Constructing Blueprints for Enterprise IT Architectures Recently deployed within a unit at AT&T, Enterprise IT Architecture Blueprinting (EAB) lets you blueprint your system designs with a degree of precision long taken for granted by engineers and architects. In fact, it's the first standardized methodology of its kind. In this book, expert Bernard Boar introduces you to the principles behind EAB and all of its features by walking through the entire design process for developing conceptual, functional, logical, and physical blueprints complete with useful icons, diagrams, and page templates. * Sample checklists and blueprint templates that you can customize and reuse
Customer Reviews:
Plagiarism.......2006-05-26
I write only about work done by my firm for AT&T that Mr. Boar has published without our permission or attribution. I personally handed him a copy of some of the pages in this book after he represented himself as an AT&T employee and asked "May I have a copy?" He never disclosed his alternate employment as an author or asked permission to publish our work. He may have done so without full disclosure to AT&T, his employer at the time.
Good attempt that falls short.......2001-02-25
The author made a valiant effort to explain how to impelement an enterprise information architecture, but falls short.
I'll start with what I like about ths book: using a blueprint approach is appealing because I place a high value on design patterns, with which this approach is consistent. The fact that the author bases his approach on the Zachman framework is another strong point. And it is apparent that Mr. Boar knows his subject.
That said, this book has a lot of shortcomings: it is inconsistent in detail - some places there is too much detail, and other places the lack of sufficient detail requires either a leap of faith or shows that the author just hasn't carefully thought the details through. The writing style is muddled. Unlike other reviewers I have not read any of the author's other books, so I cannot comment on whether or not this is atypical. To me reading this book was a chore. There is more emphasis on the author's approach than there is on actually implementing an architecture. This, in my opinion, detracts from the book.
For a well-written description of the Zachman Framework and how to implement it I recommend Melissa Cook's Building Enterprise Information Architecture. For copious detail that is given is a consistent and accurate manner I recommend Spewak and Hill's Enterprise Architecture Planning. Either of these books will provide a more complete. clearly-written approach to implementing an enterprise IT architecture.
Considerable insight into developing IT architectures.......2001-02-17
Whilst I understand the comments from Mike Tarrani & the sheer frustration that I have found from irregularities within the book. This method is very much in the right direction. Clearly Bernie has developed a method that, when implemented within an organisation, can provide consistency in a field that has always been inconsistent. This work needs to be further defined, agreed, but I don't see a better method, and to that end we have recently invested considerable effort to define a CASE tool to support the use of EAB in our company.
A disappointing book from a favorite author.......2001-01-30
I loathe giving a bad review of a book by an author whose prior works are [in my opinion] classics that have greatly influenced my thinking and professional growth. However,this book is a disappointment.
The "blueprints" given in this book are not as coherent nor are they described with the same sparkling prose for which Mr. Boar is known. I found his descriptions muddled, and his presentations redundant because the same diagrams are used over and over, which I personally found to be irritating.
Also, there are no fresh ideas in the approach - the blueprints are clearly based on the Zachman Framework. Since I am a strong proponent of this framework and approach to IT architecture I agree with the ideas and concepts behind the book. There are better, more articulate descriptions of the Zachman Framework in Enterprise Architucture Planning by Spewak and Hill, and Data Stores, Data Warehousing, and the Zachman Framework by Inmon, Zachman and Geiger.
My disappointment with this book may be because of one or more of the following reasons: Mr. Boar was pressured by the publisher to produce another book and this is the result, or [possibly] because he has wandered into areas where he is somewhat out of his element. The world of IT strategy, in which he is an acknowledged expert and fresh thinker, is not the same world as architecture. His wonderful analogies using the works of Sun Tzu and Niccolo Machiavelli to reinforce his approach to strategy in his prior books do not play well in the architecture domain, which is the focus of this book.
My recommendation is to sidestep this book if you are interested in IT architecture and consider, instead, one or both of the ones I recommended above. On the other hand, if you have an interest in IT strategy or aligning IT to business, any of Mr. Boar's books on strategic planning or IT alignment are insightful and important reading.
How to illustrate complex relationships.......2000-09-28
Boar has mastered how to illustrate complex relationships, and provides specific examples and templates that can be used. Will be helpful for any information systems architect or planner.
Product Description
Complete step-by-step course in painting techniques from getting started to achieving excellence, with over 1600 color photographs.
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Painting with Watercolors, Oils & Acrylics (The Practical Handbook Series)
Hazel Harrison
Manufacturer: Lorenz Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Watercolor Painting
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Painting
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ASIN: 0754800040 |
Book Description
A complete step-by step course in painting techniques, from getting started to achieving excellence.
Book Description
Since the J. Paul Getty Museum began collecting photographs in 1984, it has amassed one of the greatest photography collections in the world. Naef has here selected more than 200 masterpieces from this collection and written commentaries on each. Ranging from the 1830s to the 1960s, these
photographs provide an informal history of the form and offer a rich sampling of the Getty's holdings. Julia Margaret Cameron, Alfred Stieglitz, Eugene Atget, Andre Kertesz, Walker Evans, and Diana Arbus are among the more than 100 masters whose works are reproduced in this beautiful volume.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent as a reference and art history.......2002-04-23
More than just a summary presentation of the Getty's extensive holdings, "Handbook of the Photographs Collection" provides an excellent history of the art and science of photography. That the material at the Getty alone would provide for such a discourse speaks volumes of the depth and breadth of their collection. This one stays on my coffee table.
Book Description
Modern business cycle theory and growth theory uses stochastic dynamic general equilibrium models. Many mathematical tools are needed to solve these models. The book presents various methods for computing the dynamics of general equilibrium models. In part I, the representative-agent stochastic growth model is solved with the help of value function iteration, linear and linear quadratic approximation methods, parameterised expectations and projection methods. In order to apply these methods, fundamentals from numerical analysis are reviewed in detail. Part II discusses methods for solving heterogeneous-agent economies. In such economies, the distribution of the individual state variables is endogenous. This part of the book also serves as an introduction to the modern theory of distribution economics. Applications include the dynamics of the income distribution over the business cycle or the overlapping-generations model. Through an accompanying home page to this book, computer codes to all applications can be downloaded.
Customer Reviews:
Thought-Provoking Essays.......2007-09-06
In these essays, Fischer Black reaches provocative conclusions concerning the role of equilibrium in a developed economy.
Black, who published this volume while a Goldman Sachs partner, was attracted to the study of economics and finance by the concept of equilibrium. His studies lead to essays on central banking, monetary policy and foreign banking. His conclusion: there is little a central banker can do to effect conditions. These are surprising conclusions from someone who spent time on the faculty at the University of Chicago with Milton Friedman.
To me, the most interesting essays deal with the role of noise. Black argues that speculative prices contain "noise," created by those who trade on mistaken perceptions. He concludes that the prices of goods and services also contain noise introduced by the investment decisions of those acting irrationally. This results in wider fluctuations than might otherwise result.
Although widely viewed as a quant, Fischer's essays are largely verbal. He says he believes mathematical models limit the creative process, locking the modelers into specific lines of thought.
Fischer's surprising conclusions support his verbal reliance. Whether he is right or wrong, his work is always stimulating.
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Foundations for a Disequilibrium Theory of the Business Cycle: Qualitative Analysis and Quantitative Assessment
Carl Chiarella ,
Peter Flaschel , and
Reiner Franke
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0521850258 |
Book Description
In a non-market-clearing approach to business cycle theory, this book builds an advanced model of economic activity, inflation and income distribution in a Keynesian spirit. After a qualitative analysis of the basic feedback mechanisms, the authors calibrate the model to the stylized facts of the business cycle in the U.S. economy. This calibrated model is used to carry out various macroeconomic simulation studies as well as a detailed study of the macroeconomic impact of various monetary policy rules. It will appeal both to theorists and to applied and policy economists.
Book Description
This is a book on stochastic dynamic macroeconomics from a Keynesian perspective. It shows that including Keynesian features in intertemporal models considerably contributes to resolve major puzzles arising in the context of the Dynamic General Equilibrium (DGE) model. It also demonstrates that including microeconomic intertemporal behavior of economic agents in macroeconomics is not inconsistent with Keynesian economics.
Book Description
Dissatisfied with the explanations of the business cycle provided by the Keynesian, monetarist, New Keynesian, and real business cycle schools, Edmund Phelps has developed from various existing strands-some modern and some classical--a radically different theory to account for the long periods of unemployment that have dogged the economies of the United States and Western Europe since the early 1970s. Phelps sees secular shifts and long swings of the unemployment rate as structural in nature. That is, they are typically the result of movements in the natural rate of unemployment (to which the equilibrium path is always tending) rather than of long-persisting deviations around a natural rate itself impervious to changing structure. What has been lacking is a "structuralist" theory of how the natural rate is disturbed by real demand and supply shocks, foreign and domestic, and the adjustments they set in motion.
To study the determination of the natural rate path, Phelps constructs three stylized general equilibrium models, each one built around a distinct kind of asset in which firms invest and which is important for the hiring decision. An element of these models is the modern economics of the labor market whereby firms, in seeking to dampen their employees' propensities to quit and shirk, drive wages above market-clearing levels-the phenomenon of the "incentive wage"--and so generate involuntary unemployment in labor-market equilibrium. Another element is the capital market, where interest rates are disturbed by demand and supply shocks such as shifts in profitability, thrift, productivity, and the rate of technical progress and population increase. A general-equilibrium analysis shows how various real shocks, operating through interest rates upon the demand for employees and through the propensity to quit and shirk upon the incentive wage, act upon the natural rate (and thus equilibrium path).
In an econometric and historical section, the new theory of economic activity is submitted to certain empirical tests against global postwar data. In the final section the author draws from the theory some suggestions for government policy measures that would best serve to combat structural slumps.
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Booms and Recessions in a Noisy Economy (Arthur Okun Memorial Lectures Series)
Robert E. Hall
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0300048572 |
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Business Cycle Models with Indeterminacy (Contributions to Economics)
Mark Weder
Manufacturer: Physica-Verlag Heidelberg
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ASIN: 3790810789 |
Book Description
Three original models which explain business cycles as a result of self-fulfilling expectations are presented. The models are founded on the structure of dynamic general equilibrium theory. Market power and increasing returns to scale are introduced which allow indeterminancy of the Rational Expectations equilibria to be obtained. Unlike the majority of existing literature on this subject, the departures from perfect markets and constant returns presented in these models are very low and, more importantly, at a realistic level to achieve the respective results. It is demonstrated in all of the presented models that stylized facts of the business cycle can be reproduced.
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Crisis Theory
David Z. Rich
Manufacturer: Praeger Publishers
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ASIN: 0275957225 |
Book Description
Challenging chaos theory and catastrophe theory, the author contends that with the fragmented state of knowledge in contemporary times, these dynamic equilibrium-oriented theories are inadequate for generating new knowledge. Arguing that knowledge is dynamic and disequilibrium-oriented, Rich provides a new theoretical approach--crisis theory--and applies it to the problems of economics, politics, and the natural sciences. Crisis theory is constructed to deal with changes in problem areas, to allow for the development of new theories in both existing and emerging problem areas, and to allow for the exchange of information within opposing theories in economics and politics. The book is composed of three parts. Part 1 discusses the role of knowledge and its anti-realism in our contemporary era and establishes the need for a new theory. Part 2 develops the schematic of crisis theory. In Part 3, the theory is applied to the problems of long-term business cycle theories, the nine implications of Mancur Olson's logic, the problems of the postindustrial future-oriented countries, and the paradox of industrialization.
Average customer rating:
- Good introduction to the theory
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Cycles and Chaos in Economic Equilibrium
Jess Benhabib
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0691003920 |
Book Description
In recent years economists have begun to use the techniques of non-linear dynamics to show that some apparently erratic and turbulent economic phenomena reflect subtle underlying patterns. How do cyclic and chaotic dynamics arise in economic models of equilibrium? How can empirical methods be used to detect nonlinearities and cyclic and chaotic structures in economic models? In examining these questions, this book brings together the most significant work that has been done to date in economics-based chaos theory. Selected here particularly for the economist who is not a specialist in chaos theory, the essays, some previously unpublished and others not widely available, describe a new tool for understanding business cycles, stabilization policy, and forecasting. The contributors to the volume are William J. Baumol, Jess Benhabib, Michele Boldrin, William A. Brock, Richard H. Day, Raymond J. Deneckere, Allan Drazen, Jean-Michel Grandmont, Kenneth L. Judd, Bruno Jullien, Guy Laroque, Blake LeBaron, Bruce McNevin, Luigi Montrucchio, Salih Nefti, Kazuo Nishimura, James B. Ramsey, Pietro Reichlin, Philip Rothman, Chera L. Sayers, Jos A. Scheinkman, Wayne Shafer, William Whitesell, Edward N. Wolff, and Michael Woodford.
Customer Reviews:
Good introduction to the theory.......2002-04-09
It was perhaps inevitable that the theory of chaotic dynamical systems would be applied to economics. In an intuitive, everyday sense, economic phenomena is usually perceived as being "chaotic", this notion being equated with a random behavior of sorts. Whether or not economic systems are really random (from a rigorous mathematical standpoint) is the subject of other books. This one addresses the question as to whether chaos does indeed exist in economic systems. Chaos and randomness are of course distinct concepts, and this is brought out clearly by the authors of the articles in the book, the specific theme of which is to shed light on the role of oscillatory dynamics in economic fluctuations. The oscillations are put in the context of chaotic dynamical systems, which, as is well known, have a very rich orbit structure. The emphasis is on theory, but there are some articles that discuss empirical validation of chaotic dynamical system models of time series. What is most interesting about the results in the book is that chaos is a deterministic explanation of the erratic behavior of economic behavior. This is to be contrasted with the situation in financial modeling, where randonmess is thought to be essential because of arbitrage opportunities. It is fascinating to compare the ideas in this book with the ones that are very entrenched in financial modeling. The authors of the articles have been heavily involved in the research of chaotic dynamical systems in economics. Space here permits only a limited review of the contents of the book.
. Before the advent of research in chaos in economics, the complexity of economic phenomena was modeled by linear equations subjected to exogenous shocks. The approach taken in one of the articles discusses to what extent aggregate fluctuations represent endogenous phenomena that are persistent even when there are no random shocks to the economy. Recognizing that chaotic dynamical systems can generate time series that appear irregular or random, discussion is given on the models based on chaos that exhibit the persistence phenomena. Since chaotic systems have countably many periodic orbits, it is natural to ask to what extent these orbits play in models of economic phenomena. One of these considered is the overlapping generations model. A class of robust utility functions, assumed to be constant from one generation to another, are shown to give the existence of bounded trajectories that do not converge to periodic orbits or fixed points, but are also, because of the time scales involved, indistinguishable from periodic orbits of arbitrarily long period, the latter also existing in the model. The existence of these trajectories is interesting, particularly when considering the mechanism by which the trades between generations occur. This mechanism involves the introduction of a central credit authority, and even when the nominal credit expands at a constant rate, the model still exhibits erratic trajectories in the real value of credit. These trajectories appear qualitatively to be very similar to trajectories generated from random processes, and so it is no surprise that statistical techniques and ergodic theory are employed to study their properties.
Another economic model considered in the book is a two-sector growth model that consists of an industry producing consumption goods and another producing capital goods. A dynamical system parametrized by the capital depreciation rate is used to describe the time evolution of the aggregate capital stock over time, and is shown to have chaotic orbits for certain values of the capital depreciation rate. These chaotic orbits exist, interestingly, when capital, but not labor, is very productive in both sectors. An analysis of the relative capital-labor intensities is done to shed light on the oscillatory behavior of the model, this behavior contrary to the expected one of following a smooth averaged path. The latter is expected because of the choice of a concave function for the consumption and investment processes. The model is not shown to be one that could reflect phenomena that exist in the real world. In particular, the time scales needed to observe the chaotic behavior are not discussed.
Another issue taken up in the book deals with the question as to why economic activity exhibits fluctuations, and subsequent attempts to stabilize this activity via fiscal policy. The Judd model, which deals with technical innovation, is adapted to study the economic instabilities that arise from investment activity in such innovation, and the value of fiscal policy in dampening these instabilities. The model is shown to exhibit chaotic dynamics, with this being a consequence of the noncompetitive nature of a market immediately after a new good is introduced into the market. The discussion is reminiscent of arbitrage arguments in finance, since the monopolistic prices charged by the patent holder are wiped out by new innovations. Interestingly, the model shows examples of situations where stabilizing policies are undesirable, and in particular a waste of resources would result.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Southern Economic Journal, published by Southern Economic Association on October 1, 1993. The length of the article is 937 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Cycles and Chaos in Economic Equilibrium. (book reviews)
Author: Ted Jaditz
Publication:
Southern Economic Journal (Refereed)
Date: October 1, 1993
Publisher: Southern Economic Association
Volume: v60
Issue: n2
Page: p519(2)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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