I. Introduction, 653. — II. The role of government, 654. — III. Financing innovations, 657. — IV. The nature and significance of the size of innovations, 658

The accounting professionals are quite preoccupied with "The New," and much of its vitality stems from its pursuit of "The New." Society seems to equate newness with progress, either rightly or wrongly. For one thing, there have been some pretty important changes in accounting technique or emphasis or methodology, arising out of developments in political economy, in physical technology, and in the organization of commerce. In political economy proposed methods of getting economic growth have their accounting implications. Federal tax policy and federal monetary policy are important agents or retardants in economic growth, and important determinants of changes in the accountant's task. To parallel these continuing changes in the practice of accounting, there are some necessities and some opportunities for change in educational methodology. When an accounting teacher begins to survey these areas in which innovation and/or change has taken place, he finds himself right in the middle of a complex in which everything seems to be shifting one way or another. This article attempts to explore the patterns in which people respond to change in their work situations, the ideas going in a man's mind-unknown even to himself, that causes him to react in a particular way to impending changes and accounting people's reaction, when someone else's new idea begins to affect them

Applications of capital theory refer to a world of changing population, institutional processes, technology, and innovation. For example, an investment decision may be affected by some expected repetitive patterns of circumstances or by some seemingly irreversible processes threatened by obsolescence or stagnation. One may assume the principle of an eventually diminishing net returns flow. It seems desirable to treat the marginal efficiency of capital in terms of an initial investment and a net returns flow that varies with time. For a variety of such time dependent net returns flows the treatment of the marginal efficiency of capital is simplified by the Laplace transform technique illustrated in this article

The 1961 annual meeting of the American Accounting Association was held on August 28, 29, and 30 in Austin, Texas with the College of Business Administration of the University of Texas as host. At the Plenary sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday, the following speakers discussed the topics indicated: "Accounting Innovation and the Psychology of Change," by Gardner M. Jones, Michigan State University; "Principles of Divisional Income Determination," by Gordon Shillinglaw, Columbia University; "New Directions in Tax Administration," by Mortimer M. Caplin, Commissioner of Internal Revenue, United States Treasury Department; "Business Information Systems," by Robert E. Pfenning, Comptroller, General Electric Company; "A Critique of Standard Costs," by David Solomons, University of Pennsylvania; "Accounting Data for Purposes of Control," by Robert K. Jaedicke, Stanford University; and "Should We Discard the Income Concept?" by Maurice Moonitz, Director of Research, American Institute of Accountants