To get a proper perspective of the development of accounting in any country one must understand the institutions, the characteristics of the people, and the peculiarities of their business practice. In France and Germany as in other European countries they have many hundreds of years behind them. Their institutions are the result of growth through many generations. Society in the United States is not as static and there is more freedom of movement between people in different walks of life. The French business man does not have the proper attitude towards the accountant. The accountant is a necessary evil. The accounting department is regarded as an expense rather than as a part of the organization that aids in the development of efficiency and as an important factor in the success of any large business. Without doubt French law has had some influence on the development of accounting in France. The French accountants have not organized themselves into strong professional societies. Instead of a few strong organizations they have many loosely joined.

As a group, teachers of accounting have contributed largely to the literature of accounting in the way of general treatises and of special studies on particular phases of the subject, but, in so far as published material may he taken as evidence, have given comparatively little attention to the problems which arise in the teaching of accounting. It is true that at least one institution gives a course in the college curriculum in accounting for six weeks during the summer and that a number of articles have been published on one phase or another of college courses. The material, however, is scanty at best, and the writer does riot know of any attempt to give a complete statement of the problems which confront the head of an accounting department in a collegiate school of business. The present paper, however, is not concerned especially with discussing the problems of the individual teacher, but it is designed to raise the question of the responsibilities of the head of a department of accounting in directing the instructional work of his department. The writer feels that the department head should take an active part in planning the courses, in encouraging and aiding his instructors to do their best work, and in providing conditions which will pave the way for effective teaching.

The purpose of the elementary accounting courses given at the Chicago, Illinois-based University of Illinois is to give the students a thorough knowledge of basic transactions and fundamental procedure. Much of the material given in elementary accounting course can be disregarded when an examination is prepared because it represents routine work. Subjects such as, the classification of accounts, the preparation of short financial statements, adjusting entries, closing of the ledger, and books of original entry are included in the first-semester examination. The second-semester course is devoted more to accounting procedure and so for this reason the final examination given in the second semester may be counted upon to have a large number of difficult journal entries covering a wide variety of transactions. The examination for the second semester may include problems such as requiring adjusting entries, where the amount must be calculated as well as entries formulated, requiring the opening of the books of a corporation, or requiring the changing of a single proprietorship or partnership.

Reviews the book "Lake Wobegon Days," by Garrison Keillor.

Reviews the book "Dictionary of Finance and Investment Terms," by John Downes and Jordan E. Goodman.

Reviews the book "The Accounting Wars," by Mark Stevens.

Professors maintain an office in their homes for a variety of reasons. In some cases, the home office enables them to accomplish better the academic responsibilities associated with their employment, such as scholarly research or classroom preparation. The home office also may be used in connection with outside activities which provide an additional source of income, such as textbook writing or consulting. This article assesses the impact of Bodzin v. Comm. on the right of a professor to deduct home office expenses for income tax purposes and offers suggestions for sustaining the deduction in view of this more restrictive judicial environment. The cost of a home, including its maintenance, is normally a nondeductible expenditure. However, if a taxpayer uses a part of the home as a place of business, a portion of these costs are deductible as a business expense. Expenses of maintaining a home office must be ordinary and necessary business expenses to be deductible for income tax purposes. The principal source of conflict between taxpayers and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on the deduction of these expenses has centered on the interpretation of "necessary." The IRS has attempted to use the employer mandate test in support of their position that home office expenses are not necessary business expenses.

Reviews the book "A Guide to Management Accounting," 4th ed., by H.W. Broad and K.S. Carmichael.

Reviews the book "Readings in Accounting Theory," by Paul Garner and Kenneth B. Berg.

Understanding of the significance of the distinction between the definition and measurement of income may be improved by an awareness of the structure of the process by means of which one moves from the abstract region of theoretical constructs to the reality associated with operational definitions. Once this structure is perceived, alternative empirical pro positions which are considered relevant to the income concept-specificially those found in the technical literature of accounting and economics-may be attached to this skeletal framework for purposes of experimentation and evaluation. In this manner, one would expect important empirical issues to be more clearly identified, and direction thereafter to be given to research aimed at explicating the apparent consequences and relative weights of these issues. Not unexpectedly, problems beset this rather unique approach to the analysis of income metatheory at both stages. In the absence of rigorous quantitative expressions of initial, intermediate, and final states of reasoning by the individual theoretician or practitioner, the structure of this theory cannot be directly induced from explicit formulations. Perforce this leads us back one step to the formulator himself-about whom current research into the nature and simulation of human thought processes has provided some interesting insights and hypotheses for our problem. With the additional aid of several observations concerning research methodology, measurement processes, and purposive behavior, a tentative structure was outlined. In the second stage of our overall approach, the principal problem is one of dimension. Even delimiting the area of our attention to accounting and economics, the number of empirical propositions is untenably large.