Knowledge that Transforms

Until very recently, in most work on normative models for capital investment planning, it has been assumed that availability of capital is unconstrained; i.e., that money may be freely borrowed or lent at a single market rate of interest, and that no other constraints affect the proper choice of available productive investment projects to be undertaken. Since practical situations almost universally do involve such constraints, the traditional theories have, for the most part, been an unsatisfactory guide to achievement of optimal capital investment behavior in the real world.

The objectives of this paper are to derive the relationship of the geometric mean of a distribution of positive values to the conventional first four moments — arithmetic mean, variance, absolute skewness, and absolute kurtosis — and to empirically evaluate certain approximations involving these four moments for estimating the geometric means of monthly and annual holding period returns for individual stocks and for portfolios. The geometric mean is shown to be positively related to the arithmetic mean and absolute skewness and negatively related to variance and absolute kurtosis. In the case of a normal distribution a very good approximation to the geometric mean is revealed to be a function of just the arithmetic mean and variance. Additionally, empirical evidence indicates that even though a number of the monthly and annual distributions deviate significantly from normality, the approximation involving only the mean and variance produces quite accurate estimates of the geometric means of these distributions.

The question “What's in a bond rating?” has been asked at least since 1909 when such ratings were started in the United States. Informed persons who answer this question typically admit that ratings depend in part on readily available statistics on a firm's operations and financial condition. Examples of such statistics are earnings coverage, leverage ratios, and profit rates.

John Lintner, The Aggregation of Investor's Diverse Judgments and Preferences in Purely Competitive Security Markets, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Dec., 1969), pp. 347-400

Funds statement, Income, Capital Structure

Robert H. Strawser, John M. Ivancevich, Herbert L. Lyon, A Note on the Job Satisfaction of Accountants in Large and Small CPA Firms, Journal of Accounting Research, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Autumn, 1969), pp. 339-345

Earnings smoothing, Changes in accounting methods, Earnings management

Managers are usually responsible for the control of the level of several process variables, such as cost, quality, rate of output, and so on. The levels of these process variables are known as the states of the system, and they may be represented by the values either of a continuous variable or by a discrete variable. It is assumed that these states can be ordered in terms of their desirability. Some processes may move only from a more desirable to a less desirable state while others may shift in either direction. These shifts may occur with or without the intervention of the manager. The control system is a plan formulated by management to indicate when intervention should take place. Three types of control systems are generally possible. The first involves no intervention by the manager until a breakdown of the process occurs. This approach is to be favored when the continued operation of the control system is less costly than the benefits to be derived from intervention. The second type of control system consists of periodic intervention by the manager for purposes of adjusting or otherwise influencing the process. The most compelling reason for this approach lies in its ease of application. The third approach bases the intervention decision on information obtained from the process. This information is typically obtained by sampling. The present paper will concentrate on this third type of control system. Several components are incorporated into any control system. First, the manager must establish the variable or variables to be controlled. He must

Information system design alternatives have long puzzled and frustrated those interested in improving information system design. Design alternatives exist in all phases of the information system including measurement, collection, storage, processing, communication and display.' This study concentrates on a simplification of the general design problem of comparing one specified information system, an information structure, with an alternative. Review of the literature indicates that research methodology for this question is incomplete, particularly with respect to empirical verification of hypotheses, with respect to the development of empirical measures of the usefulness of changes in the information system, and with respect to inclusion of the real decision maker into the analysis. Thus, a main purpose of this study is to develop and implement empirical means of measuring and comparing the effects of changing the design of an information system. An experiment is designed for this purpose. The experiment is a business game that requires the businessmen and student participants to reach decisions concerning production quantities, advertising purchases, and input mix. The independent (controlled) variable in the experiment is a difference in time delay before information is communicated.

Nicholas J. Gonedes, The Significance of Selected Accounting Procedures: A Statistical Test, Journal of Accounting Research, Vol. 7, Empirical Research in Accounting: Selected Studies 1969 (1969), pp. 90-113