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RELATIONSHIP OF LAWS OF LEARNING TO METHODS OF ACCOUNTING INSTRUCTION.

The Accounting Review 1963 38(2), 411-414
Abstract In relation to the comments concerning the laws of learning and their application to accounting instruction, attention will be focused upon some of the learning methods with which accounting teachers are all generally familiar. These methods are commonly labeled teaching methods by many of the people but, for a more proper designation, should be expressed in terms of learning. Too many instructors in their enthusiasm for subject matter either forget or tend to subordinate the role of the student in the learning process. All too frequently one need to be reminded that one is not just teaching subject matter but rather that one is teaching students. It is readily recognized that there is no effective teaching-taking place if leaning does not result. Accounting is a diverse field and covers a wide range of materials, from basic bookkeeping processes to abstract theoretical concepts. This permits and necessitates an equally wide range in educational methodology. To determine the best learning-teaching method to employ is indeed a complex question. The author believes there is no one best way. A variety of methods is no doubt essential within a given course and even a combination of several methods proves most useful within a single class period.

A REVITALIZED ACCOUNTING CURRICULUM.

The Accounting Review 1963 38(1), 151-153
Abstract This article focuses on the accounting curriculum of the School of Business at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colarado. The faculty of the School began to take a long, hard look at the curriculum which it was offering. Undoubtedily this has been done almost universally by the faculties of schools of business across the U.S. since the publication of these two studies. After long and careful study by the faculty of the School of Business at the University of Colorado, several basic changes have been instituted in the course of study. In order to appreciate the changes which have been made, it will first be necessary to explain the program as it stood originally. The School of Business is a two-year, upper-division school with students being required to take 60 semester hours of work outside of the School, and another 60 semester hours of work within the School in order to fulfill the requirements for graduation.

ON THE MATHEMATICS OF VARIANCE ANALYSIS.

The Accounting Review 1963 38(3), 528-533
Abstract This article focuses on the "mathematics" of accounting variance analysis. It seems that the managerial significance of accounting data is a rather controversial matter and consequently it should not be left completely to the imagination of the reader. The purpose of this note is to suggest an alternative, and what is believed to be a simpler way of getting the overhead variances and then point out some of the significance of the results. One of the most striking features of present accounting literature may be said to lie in the growing interest paid to the mathematics of variance analysis. This development began in 1953 when Gilbert Amerman published his very famous article on the subject. The variation analysis may be easily tied to an effective budgetary control system by comparing the standard and actual costs of a period with the corresponding budgeted costs. On these lines it is possible to discern the influence that important activity and production mix variations had on the direct materials and labor costs. The budget variance is defined by the difference between the actual costs of the period under investigation and the flexible budget allowance for the actual hours worked.

Consumer Demand Explained by Measurable Utility Changes

Econometrica 1963 31(3), 499
Percentage changes in marginal utility are found to be invariant to utility transformations. They are quantifiable in the ordinary sense, and price and income elasticities can be expressed in terms of them. Definitions of necessityluxury, independence and complementarity-substitutability in terms of the measurable utility changes lead to insights for empirical studies. A POTENTIALLY rich source of insights about demand behavior is the wantsatiation characteristics of goods, i.e., degree of necessity or luxury of goods and degree of complementarity or substitutability between them. These characteristics have been stubborn against attempts to bring them into demand analysis. Despite decades of interest, the literature does not appear to have produced satisfactory definitions of complements and substitutes. Previous necessity-luxury analyses have rested on assumed differences in algebraic form of demand functions. Necessity-luxury attributes have not been expressed in terms of the usual utility concepts of consumer choice theory. 2 In the present article, measurable want-satiation characteristics of goods are derived by considering changes in marginal utility when expenditures are shifted within the consumer's budget. It is demonstrated that the percentage change in marginal utility of a good is invariant to utility transformations and can be related to price and income elasticities. This result is due to the previously overlooked fact that the percentage change in the marginal utility of a good, when moving along a given indifference curve, is identical to a change in the marginal rate of substitution brought about by moving from one indifference curve to another. The measurability of percentage changes in marginal utility is thus seen to be as reasonable as the measurability of the marginal rate of substitution. Two systems of percentage changes in marginal utility are developed. The ei system is appropriate for considering one good vis-a-vis all other goods. In this system, an increase in expenditure on a particular good is accompanied by an equal reduction in expenditure distributed among all other goods so

A Measure of Technological Employment

The Review of Economics and Statistics 1963 45(4), 386
AMONG the most elusive magnitudes to ,[_1quantify is the influence of technological change on employment, the reason being that technological change in any context has been difficult to isolate. Clearly, the traditional productivity ratios, such as output per unit of labor input, cannot be used to measure technological employment, since a productivity index embodies, in a seemingly indecomposable manner, the effects of in capital utilized, returns to scale, neutral and non-neutral technological change, and relative factor prices. Thus, in order to construct a measure of technological employment, we need to be able to quantify, at the minimum, the effects of in technology separately from the other forces. Yet, these other forces have meaning in themselves. Therefore, we should like to isolate the effect on the change in employment of in the following: (a) the scale of output, (b) the relative prices of capital and labor (assuming, for simplicity, only two factors), (c) returns to scale, and (d) neutral and non-neutral technology.' The present paper presents a method of measuring the forces (a)-(d) on employment and tests it on data for the private domestic non-farm sector of the United States for the period 1890-1958.2 It does this in such a way as to avoid the problem of the interaction among the forces (a)-(d) -at least to a first-order approximation. Stated differently, our objective is to frame a general method of measurement which permits a quantitative distinction to be drawn between structural changes and demand in terms of their effect on employment.8 Since the method is general, the forces (a)-(d) can be quantified for any subset in the total employed; for example, skilled or unskilled labor, regional unemployment, etc. The only requirement is that we be able to estimate a demand relation for the subset in question. We should like to emphasize the methodological rather than the substantive aspects of this paper for several reasons. The principal reason, though, is that the data, by virtue of their aggregative nature (inter alia), are not suitable to the method we will apply. Also, since the method derives from the micro theory of the firm, it should be applied, at most, to industry data. In what follows, the method is first presented verbally as far as possible. This is followed by a more precise statement of the method which permits a confrontation with data. The empirical measures of the private domestic non-farm sector are then set out and discussed. An appendix embodies a discussion of the data used in the paper.

The Econometrics of Building A New Town

The Review of Economics and Statistics 1963 45(4), 368
PLANNING for the construction of a new town is in many ways similar to planning the development of an emerging national economy. Both processes may be framed within the context of growth, susceptible to an econometric treatment. The models of Klein and Goldberger, Tinbergen, Koyck and Bos, Harrod, Domar, and others, are well known; but the time seems distant when such sophisticated analyses of national economies can be applied to a local economy. Our paper modestly seeks to narrow this distance by developing and testing an urban growth model. Although the model was conceived for a particular growth problem and for one city, it is no less applicable to more general local development problems such as the construction of new towns. The process of building a new town may be conceptualized in a dynamic programming model which seeks to optimally schedule the allocation of budgeted funds among competing investment needs in such a fashion that the needs, or targets, are satisfied in minimum time. As a corollary, since the capital appropriation is exogenously given to the new town as a continuous increasing single-valued function of time, the targets are attained at minimum cost. The targets are defined as units of physical capacity, which in turn are dichotomized as industrial and service. Finally, because the capital appropriation equates costs, with minimum cost, as well as minimum time, the amount appropriated is also minimized.

The Impact of Credit Control on Consumer Durable Spending in the United Kingdom, 1957-1961

Review of Economic Studies 1963 30(3), 181
Journal Article The Impact of Credit Control on Consumer Durable Spending in the United Kingdom, 1957–1961 Get access R. J. Ball, R. J. Ball Manchester Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Pamela S. Drake Pamela S. Drake Manchester Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 30, Issue 3, October 1963, Pages 181–194, https://doi.org/10.2307/2296319 Published: 01 October 1963