Reviews the book "Linear Programming and Economic Analysis," by Robert Dorfman, Paul A. Samuelson and Robert M. Solow.

The article presents a comment on an article by Professor Marvin Tummins which discussed the manner in which the Poisson distribution can be used by auditors as an aid in test checking. After explaining how to read the table of the Poisson distribution, the author goes on to discuss the analysis of a random sample drawn from a lot under three sections, procedure for rejection of hypothesis, procedure for acceptance of hypothesis, and evaluation of indefinite sample result. Professor Tummins has performed a useful service in calling attention to the potential usefulness of the Poisson distribution for certain checking purposes. However, there are two comments that must be made of Tummins' approach. The first point is that Tummins seems to suggest that an acceptance sampling approach can be used in the actual auditing process. There are many problems raised by such a general approach to auditing, as has been amply demonstrated by R. J. Monteverde. The second comment, then, on the Tummins' paper is that the trial and error method that is suggested is much too awkward.

Reviews the book "The Plant Accounting Regulations of the Federal Power Commission--A Critical Analysis," by Sidney Davidson.

Reviews the book "Applied Economic Analysis," edited by Francis M. Boddy.

Reviews the book "Introduction to Fiscal Policy," by Richard M. Lindholm.

In this article the author discusses notable strides in the field of accounting for public funds during the past fifteen years, as of July 1947. A logical inference is that a large measure of this improvement is an outgrowth of the taxpayers' genuine concern over the expenditure of vast sums of public funds and a widespread belief that substantial retrenchments on a voluntary basis may not be expected from the offices and agencies concerned, in some quarters expansion continues to be the order of the day. Recent budget requests of many state and local governments in the U.S. have assumed proportions of surprising magnitude, resulting largely, it must be admitted, from withdrawals of financial aid by the U.S. government and from insistent public demands for more or better service, and from public-employee demands for standards of remuneration comparable to those enjoyed by persons in non-governmental employment. The law-making body of one midwestern state, sitting in the first quarter of 1947, found itself figuratively engulfed in a flood of bills calling for more public money, the requests covering practically the whole range of governmental activity from the township justice of the peace on one hand to departments and agencies of the state on the other.

This paper has explored a problem presented by introducing formal measures of risk into firm decision making. Risk measured in the firm's asset collection may not equal risk in the claims against the assets, with a resulting inequality of valuations in an a priori balance sheet. This nonadditivity problem does not occur if covariance with some external portfolio is used as the risk measure. Computer testing has suggested that the nonadditivity problem could occur in considerable magnitude if variance were used as a risk measure, and to a substantially lesser extent if standard deviation (or the coefficient of variation) were used. Nonadditivity problems in the measures were worse in rather high (but not ultra-high) debt-use ranges and did not exist at all as long as debt was used so moderately that no chance of default was foreseen. While no findings were stated on this point, intuition and some unreported work done by one of the authors both suggest that nonadditivity would also be a problem in mixed risk measures, in which both covariance with an external portfolio and a measure of dispersion in the firm's own portfolio are employed.

Why is it difficult to restructure sovereign debt in a timely manner? In this paper, we present a theory of the sovereign debt-restructuring process in which delay arises as individual creditors hold up a settlement in order to extract greater payments from the sovereign. We then use the theory to analyse recent policy proposals aimed at ensuring equal repayment of creditor claims. Strikingly, we show that such collective action policies may increase delay by encouraging free riding on negotiation costs, even while preventing hold-up and reducing total negotiation costs. A calibrated version of the model can account for observed delays and finds that free riding is quantitatively relevant: whereas in simple low-cost debt-restructuring operations, collective mechanisms will reduce delay by more than 60%, in high-cost complicated restructurings, the adoption of such mechanisms results in a doubling of delay.