Reviews the book "Cost Accounting for Management Applications," by David H. Li.

This article focuses on a study which showed the implicit assumptions in mix and yield variance analysis. A mix situation may exist whenever more than one direct material is specified as an input of the standardized operations. Mix variance can be described in two ways: (a) the sum of individual actual quantities times the individual standard unit prices less the sum of actual quantities at the weighted average standard price (based on standard quantities and mix) or (b) the sum of actual quantities times individual standard prices less the computed normalized mix quantities at individual standard prices. The normalized mix quantities are computed for each material by applying the standard proportions for each to the total actual inputs defined in quantity terms. A necessary condition then for the analysis of mix and yield variances, by the methods described, is the establishment of a common unit of measurement of the quantities of the different material inputs.

The article stresses that accounting for values should be viewed as reliable if it is accomplished within the framework of the same basic requirements, which have contributed to the reliability of cost data. In accounting for values to be realized by the specific enterprise, the continuity assumption renders irrelevant any value, which does not relate to managements plan, normal operations, and the specific market commanded by the firm. Hence, it is value to the owner, not value in general, that is of interest in this proposal; and this value is the amount, which the owner will realize from his assets in their planned use, not the amount for which others in the industry are buying similar or identical assets. Therefore, valuations based on economy or industry indexes are irrelevant to this analysis. The most vital issue in selecting a valuation basis is, therefore, one of determining whether the particular valuation basis depends on information to which we have present access that presumably holds the most valid relationship with the future flow of revenue.

This article presents a critical evaluation of the accounting curriculum by both accounting educators and practitioners. A survey was made of accounting professors throughout the nation. The specific objectives of this study were, first, to determine what is presently being done with respect to governmental accounting in the curriculum and second, to determine the opinions held by accounting professors of the value of a course in governmental accounting. This report is based on the above mentioned survey, in which a questionnaire was mailed to one accounting professor at each of the 105 member schools of the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business. Results indicate, two schools indicated they had recently moved the course to a graduate level elective. Two schools had eliminated it and moved the area of fund accounting to another course. One school had removed it from its day program but continued to offer it at night. One school had replaced governmental accounting with a required course in accounting systems and data processing and one school was offering the course this year for the first time in ten years.

This article focuses on the conventional methods of calculating depreciation often involve the arbitrary allocation of the historical cost of a fixed asset. The use of discounted cash-flow techniques has been advocated by a number of authors as the ideal basis for allocating the cost of an asset over its useful life. In the latter method, depreciation is regarded as the periodic reduction in the value of a fixed asset arising from a change in the asset's expected future benefits. Briefly, this method requires that the estimated future net services of the asset, including the scrap value, be discounted to their present value at the end of each accounting period. The future net services of an asset are the cash inflows of the business attributable to the use of that asset alone, that is, not attributable to other outlays, for example, for labor, materials, and maintenance or repair. This article examines the implications of changes in expectations for depreciation, first, when the discount rate is the internal rate and, second, when it is an external rate such as the cost of capital.

Reviews the book "The Accounting Frontier," edited by R.J. Chambers, L. Goldberg, and R.L. Mathews.

This article focuses on a study which discussed the views of accounting professors on the problem of efficient utilization of faculty in the teaching of elementary accounting. The need for more efficient utilization of the teaching staff is a pressing problem today with mounting enrollments and a continuing shortage of qualified accounting professors. Some universities have kept their elementary accounting sections small by staffing them with graduate assistants. Other schools schedule large lecture-hall sections taught be regular faculty members. Others reach a large number of students with a single professor via television. The author conducted a study in which thirty-two leading accounting professors presented their views on the problem of more efficient utilization of faculty in the teaching of elementary accounting. The conflict inherent in large group instruction between the necessity of providing instruction to large numbers of students and the desirability of close personal contact between instructor and students is unresolved.

This article focuses on the use of computer-assisted instruction for the computation of debit and credit accounting. As financial transactions occur, documents are prepared and filed in the usual way. Each transaction is analyzed into one or more pairs of equal debits and credits. Each such pair is entered in a magnetic tape as four numbers: a file number, the number of the account debited, the number of the account credited, and the dollar amount. The tape is fed into the computer, which is programmed to ignore the file number, to choose the table row headed by the debited account's number and the column headed by the credited account's number, and to add the dollar amount to the total in the cell thus designated. National income accounting was created on the enterprise accounting model. It was vigorously developed by economists and statisticians, who converted the double-entry accounts and trial balances into input-output tables of the national economy.

Abstract this article focuses on the accounting concepts useful for accounting students. The ultimate test of one's knowledge of concepts (as opposed to his rote memorization of their definitions) lies in his ability properly to apply the concepts to problems or situations with which he has never before been confronted. The "investment funds" concept is, like the investment credit, an attempt to achieve certain objectives of fiscal policy by inserting special provisions in the tax law. The investment funds system is a tax incentive scheme designed to promote a shift of private investment from periods of boom to periods of recession. The investment funds concept described in the article is a highly simplified version of a system currently in use in, Sweden. The assignment could have been made considerably more difficult by making the definition of "investment funds" more closely correspond to the Swedish system.

Reviews the book "College Accounting- Intermediate/Advanced," by Horace Brock, Charles E. Palmer and Fred Archer.