Cost Information and Government Decision Making

What This Is

This page allows the viewer to download PDF-formatted (Public Document Format) versions of my book, Cost Information and Government Decision Making. The PDF format allows the user to read and print each chapter but not to modify it.

The point of view of this book is from the position of a government manager who must make a cost-based decision, such as setting a fee, evaluating the desirability of contracting a service out, determining the cost of expanding the delivery of a service, etc. As such, this book contains a minimum of technical accounting terminology and makes few assumptions about the nature of the accounting system in use. The material provides tools and techniques that, coupled with a sufficient knowledge of accounting, allow for effective decision making in government.

How to Use This Book

Cost Information and Government Decision Making steps the reader through the background necessary to understand the basic concepts of cost accounting (the determination of "true economic cost" for government services and then shows how these concepts can be applied to pricing services, costing labor relations settlements, evaluating contracting out and other cost-based government decisions.

Knowledge of the concepts in this book allow a manager, an analyst, a legislator to ask the really hard questions about change in the volume or ranges of services delivered.

Government officials are free to use the enclosed material without limit. All others are permitted to personal use only. Requests for educational usage may be made to the author via the link provided below.

While the format of this page allows the reader to skip around and read chapters in any order, in most cases the reader will benefit most if they absorb chapters I to VI in order. Chapters VII to XI show detailed applications of the material established in the first six chapters and thus are more or less independent of each other.

The table of contents of Cost Information and Government Decision Making follows. Clicking on the link for each chapter will cause the PDF file containing that chapter to download to the user's computer where they can be read by Adobe's Acrobat Reader. Those who do not have the most up-to-date version of this free software can get a copy at http://www.adobe.com.

Table of Contents
of Cost Information and Government Decision Making