A major purpose of the Estes study was to determine, by using questionnaires, the expected usefulness of current cost information for various classes of assets, both current and long term.2 Two assumptions were made in conducting the study: (1) current costs were objectively measurable, and (2) the current cost information would be of a supplementary nature only. The sample was selected from three organizations: the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts, the National Association of Bank Loan Officers and Credit Men (Robert Morris Associates), and the Financial Executives Institute. These groups were chosen because Estes believed they closely paralleled two major financial statement user groups: (1) investors, both current and potential, and (2) lenders. Questionnaires were sent to 300 members from each group. A total of 338 or 37.8% responded. The results of the study were that 81 percent of the item responses

It is often necessary to estimate a frequency function or certain points on a frequency function from very limited data. A usual procedure for this estimation involves two steps. From the set of “well-known” frequency functions, e.g., the normal, poisson, binomial, etc., one chooses that function which seems likely to best “fit” and then uses the available data to estimate the parameters of the chosen distribution. If no one “well-known” function can be chosen a priori, then perhaps several likely candidates are tried and the one which fits best according to some criterion is chosen. For many purposes, this procedure is quite unobjectionable.

Markowitz's [2] portfolio selection model was originally concerned with financial investments, but the model's implications for capital budgeting are now well recognized. Markowitz's basic idea is that the optimal portfolio for an investor is not simply any collection of good securities, but a balanced whole, providing the investor with the best combination of “return” and “risk.” Return and risk are to be measured by the expected value and variance of the probability distribution of portfolio return. Although financial writers have generally accepted Markowitz's measure of return, they have not been completely satisfied with his suggested measure of risk [1]. In fact, Markowitz himself had reservations about choosing variance as a measure of risk.1 Besides variance, he considered five other alternative measures of risk:(1) The expected value of loss;(2) The probability of loss;(3) The expected absolute deviation;(4) The maximum expected loss; and(5) The semivariance.

Journal Article The Stagnation of Brazil's Exports: A Comment Get access Thomas C. Lowinger Thomas C. Lowinger Washington State University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 84, Issue 4, November 1970, Pages 699–704, https://doi.org/10.2307/1880853 Published: 01 November 1970

Journal Article A Theory of Conglomerate Mergers: Reply Get access Dennis C. Mueller Dennis C. Mueller Cornell University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 84, Issue 4, November 1970, Pages 674–679, https://doi.org/10.2307/1880849 Published: 01 November 1970

The constraint on bank supply of demand deposits, 524. — Aggregative properties, 529. — Conclusions, 529.

Introduction, 639. — Factor analysis, 639. — Discriminant analysis, 644.

[The results of A. K. Sen and P. K. Pattanaik on sufficient conditions for the transitivity of simple majorities are extended to the case where it is not assumed that the individual's indifference relations are transitive.]