Reading List | Acquisition Talk

Here is a shell of a defense acquisition history reading list. A lot more to add and organize.

Of course, the first place to start is the DoD acquisition history series.

My acquisition history paper is here, it synthesizes a lot of information.

Some favorites include:

Roherty, Decisions of McNamara (https://www.amazon.com/Decisions-Robert-S-McNamara-Secretary/dp/0870241516)
Ries, The Management of Defense (https://www.amazon.com/Management-Defense-Organization-Control-Services/dp/0801805570)
Murdock, Defense policy formulation (https://www.amazon.com/Defense-Policy-Formation-Comparative-Analysis/dp/0873952529)
Rockwell, The Rickover Effect (https://www.amazon.com/Rickover-Effect-How-Made-Difference/dp/0595252702)

PPBE Reform Reading list:

Frederick Mosher, (1954) Program Budgeting: Theory and Practice with Particular Reference to the U.S. Department of the Army.
Frederick Mosher, (1967) “Program Budgeting in Foreign Affairs: Some Reflections”
Frederick Mosher, (1967) “PPBS: Two Questions.” Letter to Editor-in-Chief, Public Administration Review, Vol. XXVII, No. 1, March 1967
Allan Schick, (1966) “The Road to the PPB: The Stages of Budget Reform.”
Allan Schick, (2014) “The Metamorphoses of Performance Budgeting”
Aaron Wildavsky, (1966) “The Political Economy of Efficiency: Cost-Benefit Analysis, Systems Analysis, and Program Budgeting.” Public Administration Review, Vol XXVI, No. 4, Dec. 1966.
Aaron Wildavsky, (1969) “Rescuing Policy Analysis from PPBS.”
Aaron Wildavsky, (1970) “PPB: Two Replies” Public Administration Review, Vol. 30, No. 2.
Aaron Wildavsky, (1978) “Policy Analysis is What Information Systems Are Not.”
Aaron Wildavsky, (1986) Budgeting: A Comparative Theory of Budgetary Processes
Demarest, Heidi, (2011) “The Budget Paradox: Simultaneous Stability and Volatility in the Army’s Budget.”
Eric Lofgren, (2020) The DoD Budget Process: The Next Frontier of Acquisition Reform.
Eric Lofgren, (2017) A History of Thought in Defense Acquisition.
Eric Lofgren, (2018) Cost and Competition in US Defense Acquisition.
Eric Lofgren, (2018) Processes of Weapon Systems Innovation.
Chris Paparone, (2008) PPBE: A Red or a Blue Pill? Can Defense Sensemakers Really be Rational in a Hyperturbulent World?
Jackson Committee Hearings, (1967-1970) “Planning, Programming, Budgeting: Inquiry of the Subcommittee on National Security and International Operations.”
L.R. Jones and Jerry McCaffery, (2006) “Reform of the Planning, Programming, Budgeting System, and Management Control in the U.S. Department of Defense: Insights from Budget Theory.”
Kenneth White Jr, (1972) “PPBS and Policy Analysis: Are They Really Incompatible?”
Clark Murdock, (1974) Defense Policy Formation: A Comparative Analysis of the McNamara Era. Albany, State University of New York Press, 1974.
James Roherty, (1970) Decisions of Robert S. McNamara: A Study of the Role of the Secretary of Defense. University of Miami Press, Coral Gables, FL.
James Schlesinger, (1968) Defense Planning and Budgeting: The Issue of Centralized Control.
Hitch and McKean, (1960) The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age
Robert McNamara, Charles Hitch, Alan Enthoven, (1966) A modern design for Decision Decision: A McNamara-Hitch-Enthoven anthology.
Charles Hitch, (1966) Decision-Making for Defense
Stephanie Young, (2009) “Power and the Purse: Defense Budgeting and American Politics, 1947-1972.”, Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley.
Bill Greenwalt and Dan Patt, (2021) Competing in Time: Ensuring Capability Advantage and Mission Success through Adaptable Resource Allocation
Pete Modigliani, Matt MacGregor, Dan Ward, (2021) Five by Five: Five Disciplines and Five Strategic Initiatives for the Pentagon in the Digital Age.
David Novick (ed.), (1967) Program Budgeting: Program Analysis in the Federal Budget, 2nd edition.
Fred Thompson, “Public Economics and Public Administration.”
Alain Enthoven and K.V. Smith, (1971) How Much is Enough? Shaping the Defense Program, 1961-1969

Cost and Pricing Reading List:

Captialism without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy. This is a great resource for understanding why intangible capital (software, data, product design, enterprise tools, etc.) are very different from an economic standpoint than industrial-era hardware.
The End of Accounting. This also addresses intangibles, but specifically for the case of financial reporting. Now, this is at a different level than managerial/cost accounting from which products may be priced. But the same principles apply. Financial accounting as a proxy for company valuation, and cost accounting as a proxy for product value. They have very interesting data and recommendations. Also, they have a blog.
Relevance Lost: Rise and Fall of Managerial Accounting. Great book on how cost accounting has declined in relevance to making important firm decisions like pricing.
Information Rules. There’s a link to download the whole book as a PDF here. This is a seminal economics book on the information economy, including a lot on pricing. Hal Varian, btw, helped solve Google’s ad words pricing auction and is their chief economist.
LSE Essays on Cost. This is some super deep economics here on the meaning of opportunity cost and why Government’s pricing practices are ill-founded. Read the essays by Buchanan, Robbins, Thirlby (Subjective theory of value), Wiseman (Uncertainty, cost, and collectivist) and Coase.
Read some of Arnold Kling’s blog posts that discuss why “price discrimination explains everything.” This is an important complement to what is learned in Information Rules.