A recent survey by the Controllership Foundation to ascertain the public's acceptance of the facts and figures of business accounting disclosed several facts. The accountant is also confronted with the possibility that over-simplification of financial statements might easily result in confusion rather than clarity. The top managements, the controllers, the public accountants, the educators, the American Institute of Accountants, and the Controller's Institute of America have tremendous responsibility and an opportunity during the next five years to make the corporate annual report the keystone or media of communication to correct public and employee concepts of American business. Hence, improvements in financial statements and annual reports may well be the result of trial and error and certainly requires the exercise of good judgment and knowledge if continued improvement is to be had; innovations for innovation's sake are not satisfactory. Therefore, the controller and the public accountant are presented with a continuous challenge and grave responsibility to make the annual report more valuable and informative by their influence on its content and preparation; only through these combined efforts will the annual report gain the confidence of the public, labor unions, the investors and top management

The systems of accounts for public utilities have been revised more or less extensively since 1937. Of the several interesting features embodied in these systems, one particular innovation, the original cost procedure, really deserves more careful attention than accountants have seemed willing to give it. The principal advocate (but not the originator of the idea) of the original cost procedure for utility systems of accounts has been the Committee on Statistics and Accounts of the National Association of Railroad and Utility Commissioners (NARUC). The original cost procedure ingeniously utilizes accounting techniques to isolate and emphasize information which the regulatory authorities have said they must have in order to discharge their regulatory functions adequately. Depreciation is universally prescribed for public utilities in modern uniform systems of accounts. This requirement raises the interesting question of whether the acquisition adjustment account is to be subjected to similar periodic write-off. The system, in fact, does provide that the amounts recorded in this account with respect to each property acquisition shall be depreciated, amortized, or otherwise disposed of, as the Commission may approve or direct

THE allocation of resources in a planned economy is a problem which has engaged the attention of many writers in recent years.2 Theoretical treatment of the question has emphasized mainly the static solution, i.e., the organization of production to maximize the satisfaction of wants, or the output desired by the State, given a fixed volume of resources, labor force, and level of technology. It has generally been held that the rate of capital formation either depended on an arbitrary decision by the planning authorities, or on the time-preferences of the society. Given some rate of capital formation, Western writers have agreed that investment could most effectively be allocated by equalizing the marginal net productivity of capital in all directions.3 Section II of this paper presents an abbreviated translation' of an analysis of this last problem by a Soviet writer, Professor Khachaturov, published in a I946 textbook 5 to be used in technical schools for engineering and operating personnel in railroad transportation. The general approach is ostensibly quite different from that referred to above, and should be of interest as a sample of Soviet economic thought.6 Statements in the text indicate that this approach has actually been used by Soviet planning organizations. The author of the text also proposes certain conceptual innovations. It appears doubtful whether they have been, or will be, accepted in the USSR.7 The following section contains the gist 8 of the argument as presented by Khachaturov. In sections III, IV, and V, below, an attempt is made to relate the Soviet approach to familiar capitalist concepts, analyze the proposals made, and assess their operational feasibility