* Assistant Professor, University of Florida. author wishes to thank Professors Bodenhorn, Greenball, and Livingstone of Ohio State University for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. This paper is part of Gerald L. Salamon, Comparison of the Accounting and Internal Rates of of Firms With Nonnegative Growth Rates and Infinitive Lives, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1971. 'R. S. Carlson, Measuring Period Profitability: Book Yield Versus True Yield, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1964. M. N. Greenball, Appraising Methods of Accounting for Accelerated Tax Depreciation: A Relative Accuracy Approach, Journal of Accounting Research (Autumn 1969), pp. 26289. G. C. Harcourt, The Accountant in a Golden Age, Oxford Economic Papers, March 1965, pp. 66-80. J. L. Livingstone and G. L. Salamon, Relationship Between the Accounting and the Internal Rate of Measures: A Synthesis and An Analysis, Journal of Accounting Research (Autumn 1970), pp. 199-216. E. Solomon, Return on Investment: Relation of Book Yield to True Yield, Research in Accounting Measurement, ed. R. K. Jaedicke, Y. Ijiri, and O. Nielsen (Menasha, Wise.: American Accounting Association, 1966), pp. 232-44. 2 scope of this investigation will be restricted to the research which is cited in footnote 1. In order to avoid the frequent repetition of several authors' names we will use the term prior to denote that group of researchers whose work is cited in the footnote 1. 'Ezra Solomon, Alternative Rate of Concepts .. ., op. cit., p. 68.

Uncertainty, Financial reporting, Risk, Confidence intervals

Managerial decision making, Budget adaptiveness, Budget Tightness

Market price of assets, Replacement costs, Fair value

Auditing, Auditing process, Consistency, Accelerated Depreciation

Accounting research, Practical relevance, Direction for research

At the close of such a conference as this, it is appropriate that the critical synthesis be as noncritical as possible. Each of the papers has been dissected; what is necessary at this point are some vacuous well-meaning comments that no one can take umbrage at. To ensure getting comments like these requires selecting someone who is certain not to understand the papers. This does not become a formidable obstacle, because the probability of success is very high if the person selected is one with full professorial rank. My first comments will be directed to the title. Question has been raised as to what empirical research is. To answer this I would like to commence with a possible definition of research, namely that research is the formulation and testing of hypotheses with the aim of understanding and predicting behavior. If this definition is accepted, then it is impossible to classify any endeavor as research unless it is empirical. Hypotheses may be stated without observation or experiment but they cannot be tested in a nonempirical fashion. It has been said that one feature of the Renaissance was the replacement of medieval theorizing by research. If this is true, accounting may be said to be in the renaissance period. Up to this time hypotheses have been formulated (any proposal for a change in accounting methods is basically a hypothesis that the use of the proposed accounting method will have some kind of desirable results-the exact nature of these is frequently not stated), but hypothesis testing has been rare. The only possible reason to use the term empirical research for the papers presented here is to point out to the person accustomed to use the term research in a loose sense that these are research papers in the proper sense. These papers are on empirical research in accounting. Accounting,

Currency risk, Price Changes, Sales

Amortization, Impairment, Inventory