Reviews the book 'The Businessman's View of the Purposes of Financial Reporting,' by C. D. Rice, H. C. Ford, R.J. Williams and G. W. Silverman.

Reviews the book "Accounting Research 1960-1970: A Critical Evaluation," edited by Nicholas Dopuch and Lawrence Revsine.

Reviews the book "Principles of Auditing," Fifth Edition by Walter B. Meigs, E. John Larsen and Robert F. Meigs.

Reviews the book "Practical Controllership," 3rd ed., by David R. Anderson, Leo A. Schmidt, and Andrew M. McCosh.

This article presents information on expectations and achievements in income theory. A major confusion concerning the relationship between ex ante present value and ex post concepts of income and asset valuation underlies much of the recent literature in income theory and asset valuation. Many claims have been made in favor of the present value concepts and measurements as providing the ideal accounting system which are not valid, and many criticisms of historical accounting which are based on the supposed merits of present value accounting are not sound. The case for the use of current value or replacement cost accounting is thought by many to rest on the merits of present value accounting whereas it really rests upon other grounds. The case for the dominant position of ex ante present value income rests on the needs of investors for information about future income prospects of a firm. Investors in business enterprises, i.e., owners, are interested in the prospects of future income from investments, and it is differences in these future prospects which determine the allocation of their investment funds.

Reviews the book 'Topical Guide to Accounting Readings,' edited by Peter H. Knutson.

This article presents a comment on the study of the usefulness of financial ratios to investors in common stock in the U.S. It is not clear if the usefulness of the financial ratios would be ascertained. It shows that the strong conclusions made regarding the lack of usefulness of financial ratios may not have been warranted. The research given design and the testing procedure are not quite appropriate for drawing a definitive statement about the usefulness of financial ratios. The study, however, provides a good base for future efforts in the area.

The article reports that the use of the entropy measure must be a function of its context and that the meaning attributable to the entropy should be determined by the nature of the input data which are used in computing the measure. Thus, the same measure of the entropy could be used to measure uncertainty, ignorance, or information, and to measure decomposition. The latter is obtained when proportions are substituted for probabilities. The results of this study also suggest that the indiscriminant utilization of the entropy in accounting measurements should be a matter of concern. Finally, there is a great need in accounting to measure the level of data aggregation which would be considered optimal. Although the results of this research did not support the entropy for fulfilling such a need, they did not preclude the possibility of the usefulness of the measure given the appropriate formulation and decision situation. The entropy may only be used to make a choice from among competing sets, which are acceptable methods of aggregation under the prevailing accounting conventions.

This article focuses on a study that examines issues related to the efficiency of subject surrogation in accounting research. Frequently, researchers interested in empirical research encounter difficulties in gathering data for two main reasons: the reluctance of many executives to provide the needed cooperation and the relatively high cost of conducting field studies. Consequently, accountants were persuaded to use students as substitutes for businessmen. This substitution has created a troublesome issue in research methodology: the reasonableness of subject surrogation in making decisions. Since the surrogation issue has not been settled and given a disposition towards a positivist's approach to surrogation, an attempt was made to evaluate the reliability of the surrogation process by analyzing differences in decisions rendered by actual decision-makers and by student surrogates in a particular decision situation. The article also consists of a report on the study and the results, the claimed contribution of which is supplying an additional evidence on the reasonableness of surrogation.

Reviews the book 'Introductory Accounting--A Managerial Emphasis,' by E. Bryan Smyth and Walter L. Burke.