Reviews the book "The Variable Annuity, its Impact on the Savings-Investment Market," by Cedric V.Fricke.

The models presented in this paper grew out of an attempt to apply the theory of teams of Marschak and Radner to the organization of the sales force in a typical wholesale bakery. As organizations go, the one we have chosen to analyze is an extremely simple one, even when—as is quite obviously not the case in what follows—it is viewed in its full complexity. At the risk of achieving results of quite limited general interest, a “simple,” easily quantified subject was deliberately chosen as the best place to begin to apply a theory that pretends to prescribe optimum decisions of a team in a precise way. We shall not here go much beyond a discussion of some mathematical models which deal only with the day-to-day problem a bakery sales force faces in attempting to “properly” supply its regular customers with a single product. Problems of advertising, of price policy, of product design, and of obtaining new customers are ignored. All the reader needs to know, to begin with, is that the sales force consists of truck-driver salesmen who daily visit each of their given customers (i.e. grocery stores) leaving, on consignment, an amount of bread to be decided by the salesman. At the end of the day the salesman returns to the plant and submits an order for the next day. For our purposes here the “organization” is characterized by the way in which these orders are jointly formed. In the last section, after the models have pin-pointed the organization problem, we shall return to a more detailed description of procedures found in practice.

Abstract Although social implications may exist, businesses are formed primarily in response to ownership conviction that profits can be obtained from operation. In order to measure operating results, to gauge the effectiveness of management and to estimate the vitality of the owners' investment, detailed knowledge of past performance is essential. Subsequent investors and creditors need to know past performance to estimate profit making potential. Accountants in public practice may well be facilitating the administration of economic activity by making themselves available for management services. Someone however, ought to be able to compute profitability for the owners and to tell them what net return for a given period of time has been enjoyed on their investment. Economists follow the principle that costs should be related to revenues on the same price level basis and that the income in one period should be compared with the income in another period on the same price-level basis. Determination of net income is certainly one of the important functions of the accountants.

Abstract This article focuses on some of the problems facing the accounting society and suggests what the profession of accounting can do toward their future solutions. The problems are summarized as--To induce, rather than to force, business management and union labor to reach collective bargaining agreements, to save out of the flow of consumer purchasing power and corporate earnings, enough to equip with adequate tools and other capital assets, to achieve a more adequate understanding on the part of many more persons of the nature and workings of monetary system in its relationship to international and domestic commodity prices, wage rates, volume of business, volume of savings and levels of interest rates. To make progress towards something, that is a paradox and may turn out to be an impossibility. According to the author, accountants can and must play a leading role in disseminating the necessary information and knowledge and the extent to which Accountancy contributes to the necessary solution of these problems will determine the brilliance of its future.

Reviews the book "Principles of Accounting-Advanced," 5th ed., by H.A. Finney and Herbert E. Miller.