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Paul Wendt wrote: 
 
>Thus economic efficiency is what economists study and engineering 
>efficiency is what engineers study.  But economists also say, in effect, 
>"engineers make the mistake of studying engineering efficiency". 
 
The irony is that during the (late) 20th century, engineering conceptions 
of the world dominated economists' quest for a more scientific analysis of 
economic dynamics. While economists claimed to be using rigorous 
mathematics as a universal language, their techniques were in fact mostly 
popularized by and borrowed from engineering. 
 
Here's a quote from Preston J. Miller (1994: "The Rational Expectations 
Revolution," Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. xiii): 
 
"Before the [rational expectations] revolution, macroeconomic policymaking 
was viewed as an engineering problem. Guiding the economy is similar to 
guiding a rocket ship....A macroeconomic policymaker's goal was to keep 
the economy on a full employment, noninflationary path, similar to an 
engineer's goal of keeping a rocket ship on its course. The policymaker 
had policy tools to control, such as tax rates or base money, similar to 
an engineer's levers and dials. The policymaking problem was posed as 
adjusting the tools based on new information about the economy's position 
and the economic environment to best keep the economy on its full 
employment noninflationary path. This was similar to the engineer's 
problem of adjusting the levers and dials based on new information about 
the rocket ship's position and external conditions to best keep the rocket 
ship on its course." 
 
In case you're interested, Nancy Wulwick has written about some of the 
connections between economics and engineering in 1990: "The Mathematics of 
Economic Growth," Working Paper No. 38, Jerome Levy Economics Institute, 
Bard College and 1995: "The Hamiltonian Formalism and Optimal Growth 
Theory," in Measurement, Quantification, and Economic Analysis, edited by 
I.H. Rima, London: Routledge. I have a paper forthcoming on "Engineering 
Dynamic Economics" in the 1997 HOPE supplement. 
 
                --Esther-Mirjam Sent 
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