Knowledge that Transforms

Books partly or wholly devoted to giving instruction in the art of keeping accounts date from 1494 when Luca Pacioli's Summa was published in Venice. It is reasonable to suppose, however, that manuscript expositions of bookkeeping were in existence before then, for use within commercial schools, by individual instructors, or possibly for circulation among those interested in acquiring mercantile knowledge. Several early manuscripts on other aspects of mercantile practice have survived,' but only one which includes some discussion of bookkeeping is known to us, although not in its original form. Manuscripts on bookkeeping continued to be written and presumably used even after the first books on the subject had been published. It may be assumed that these were compiled by their writers for the limited purpose of instructing their own pupils, though no doubt they came to the notice of others. In this article the various manuscripts on mercantile accounts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are described and discussed.2 Its scope

Debt accounting, Liquidity, Uncertainty, Present value of Debt

Investment credit, Taxation, Income tax, Institutional environment

Inventory, Inventory valuation, Quantity and Price effects, Inventory write downs

R. P. Manes, J. M. Samuels, D. J. Smyth, Inventories and Sales: A Cross Section Study, Journal of Accounting Research, Vol. 5, Empirical Research in Accounting: Selected Studies 1967 (1967), pp. 139-156

Learning curve model, Capital Budgeting, Productivity, Innovation

Linked Loans, Real income accounting, Price level changes, Loans