Books partly or wholly devoted to giving instruction in the art of keeping accounts date from 1494 when Luca Pacioli's Summa was published in Venice. It is reasonable to suppose, however, that manuscript expositions of bookkeeping were in existence before then, for use within commercial schools, by individual instructors, or possibly for circulation among those interested in acquiring mercantile knowledge. Several early manuscripts on other aspects of mercantile practice have survived,' but only one which includes some discussion of bookkeeping is known to us, although not in its original form. Manuscripts on bookkeeping continued to be written and presumably used even after the first books on the subject had been published. It may be assumed that these were compiled by their writers for the limited purpose of instructing their own pupils, though no doubt they came to the notice of others. In this article the various manuscripts on mercantile accounts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are described and discussed.2 Its scope

Inventory, Inventory valuation, Quantity and Price effects, Inventory write downs

Production Functions in which the Elasticities of Substitution stand in Fixed Proportion to Each Other: A Comment Get access M. S. Ramanujam M. S. Ramanujam Delhi School of Economics Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 34, Issue 4, October 1967, Page 432, https://doi.org/10.2307/2296564 Published: 01 October 1967

A LTHOUGH econometric models have been constructed for a wide variety of macro-economic systems, there have been few reports, if any, of econometric models which have attempted to examine a firm in its entirety. This paper presents some results of a study intended to develop a relatively comprehensive simultaneous-equations model of a firm. The model consists of ten relational equations and five definitional equations. Endogenous variables in the model include sales, prices, output, inventories, various cost and expense items, and investments. The effects of exogenous variables such as wage rates, raw material prices, and external demand determinants are also estimated. Other variables which would make the model more complete are considered but not included in the final version because of limitations of the available data. The data used to estimate the parameters of this quarterly model refer to a firm that is a wholly-owned division of a larger, parent corporation.' The subject firm manufactures and sells a variety of models of what is essentially one product used primarily in the manufacture of home laundry appliances such as clothes washers and dryers. The firm is in an oligopolistic market, being one of a few suppliers of this product to the home laundry equipment industry. Comparison of ordinary least squares estimates and two-stage least squares estimates of the parameters of the model indicates that for this particular sample there was not a great deal of difference in the results of these alternative estimating procedures. The two sets of estimates are generally within a few percentage points of each other and in only one case is the difference as large as 15 per cent. The inclusion of various detailed cost and expense variables in the model offers an opportunity to analyze the internal operations of this firm in some depth. However, many of the conclusions which may be drawn from this model should be considered as being extremely tentative at this time. For the firm under study, the elasticity of demand with respect to price and the elasticity of price with respect to cost are both highly inelastic. These low elasticities might be explained by the competitive nature of this particular component parts industry in which total demand is determined by factors beyond its control and where price reductions by one firm may be met by similar actions of other firms in order to eliminate any great price advantage. The fact that partial elasticity of demand is larger with respect to sales effort than to product engineering effort indicates that expenditures for sales effort are, on the average, relatively more efficient at increasing sales than expenditures for product engineering. This does not seem unreasonable, particularly in an industry where there may not be much product differentiation among firms. Also, the estimated model indicates that expenditures for product engineering, capital equipment, and administration do result in some reductions in this firm's manufacturing costs, as expected. In the original functions explaining expenditures for sales effort, capital equipment, product engineering, and manufacturing engineering, the estimates of the coefficients of certain explanatory variables such as profits, sales minus inventory, and the firm's share of the total industry sales are all negative. Although it is by no means conclusive, these negative coefficients may be interpreted as an indication that the firm is operating with satisficing [9] criteria rather than maximizing criteria with respect to sales and profits. Further analysis of these same functions explaining the expenditures for investment and expense items indicates that expenditures for capital investment and manufacturing engineering are more sensitive to changes in sales than are expendi* The author is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Cornell University. He is indebted to Professor T. C. Liu for many valuable suggestions during the course of this study. The interpretation of results and any shortcomings are the author's own responsibility. 1For security reasons, the corporation will be namel ss.

JN recent years we have witnessed mounting controversy regarding balanced and unbalanced growth as competing policy objectives. Increasingly active theoretical discussions and political concern with this aspect of economic growth warrants a probe into the development experience of different countries. The virtual neglect, so far, of empirical investigation 1 into the nature and process of sectoral growth-rate dispersion can be partly explained by the paucity of relevant data and partly by the fact that precise operational concepts required for the study of the problem have not yet evolved. The purpose of this paper is to present sectoral growth-rate imbalances of different countries as related to the process of national overall development. Our concern will be with the dispersion of sectoral growth rates and their relation to the over-all growth rate on the one hand and to the level of national development on the other. For this purpose cross-sectional and time-series analyses have been used employing such data as are readily available. The various alternative versions of the doctrine of balanced growth (the uniformity concept of balance, the income elasticity concept of balance, etc.) are presented in section III and empirically tested. However, before embarking on this task, it is necessary to postulate the relationship between the over-all growth rate and the sectoral growth rate and specify precisely the nature of the variables entering into the postulated relationship. This is done in section II. Countries are classified according to their pattern of growth in section IV and the broad conclusions as to the relationship between the level of national development and sectoral are listed in section VI. It may be mentioned at the outset that the study is not meant to examine the causes of balanced and unbalanced growth. Sectoral or imbalance is taken as given. The affect of sectoral balance or on a country's over-all rate of growth is what is being investigated. In order to examine, with any thoroughness, the effects of variations in sectoral growth rates on the over-all growthrate, we must remove from consideration the causes of sectoral imbalance. It may also be mentioned that the present study does not take into account the affect of foreign trade on sectoral growth rates. Nurkse holds that

Liability, Deferred revenue, Breakage, Accrued expense

Econometric models have often been used to explain and predict demand, production and price patterns of agricultural commodities. With computers generally available, estimation and application of these models is a simple matter. In spite of this, there has been nothing written, at least nothing that we are aware of, which details the use of such models as an aid to speculation in commodities futures. This brief note reports successful use of an econometric model and a time-sharing computer system for this purpose.

Journal Article The Norm of a Closed Technology and the Straight-Down-the-Turnpike Theorem Get access S. G. Winter, Jr. S. G. Winter, Jr. The Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, California Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 34, Issue 1, January 1967, Pages 67–84, https://doi.org/10.2307/2296571 Published: 01 January 1967