Reviews the book "Economic Fluctuations," by Maurice W. Lee.

Reviews the book "Private Credit and Public Debt," by Anatol Murad.

Abstract The article focuses on legal decisions on accounting reserves. The hundreds of recent annual corporate reports which include one or more reserves in their statements of financial position, indicate that the condemned man is still eating a hearty breakfast. Despite the fact that indiscriminate use of the term 'reserve' in accounting was strongly criticised by committees of the two leading societies of professionals and educators in the field about five full years ago, one has only to notice in their reports for 1953 the 'General Reserve' which incorporated of over twenty-two million dollars. The opinions of accountants on the subject of reserves and their use is fairly well known. It was felt that an interesting investigation could be made, however, to determine what is the feeling of the law, as expressed by court decisions, on accounting reserves and to see what treatment the legal cases give to the generally recognized accounting principles involved. One of the reasons for the denunciation of the loose use of the term 'reserve' to cover a variety of different types of accounts is because in general usage, outside of accounting, a reserve is considered a fund of cash or other assets which is held or retained for a specific purpose.

Abstract Accounting and legal authorities insist that the law has materially influenced the development of accounting principles and practices, and that this influence has had profound and far reaching effects. Conversely, it has been asserted that accounting practice has done much, by developing the concept of the single entity of the group of affiliated companies, through the consolidated statement, in bringing about some legal recognition of these separate entities as a single operating unit. In conducting the legal investigation, the argument as to whether there are indeed any true principles of accounting is ignored, and an authoritative group of principles affecting the consolidated state merits is used, the acceptance of each by the profession as a recognized principle of accounting being individually shown. The treatment of each principle is then followed by a discussion of the court decisions that involve the application of each of the accounting tenets studied. This article does not generally attempt to analyze critically each of the cases cited to decide whether it enunciated what might be called good or bad law, in the light of the basic legal or accounting theories, rather the study accepts the decisions as it finds them, and merely attempts to determine the extent to which they approve or disapprove of the accounting principles involved in the particular cases.

Reviews the book "Intermediate Accounting," 3rd ed., by Arnold W. Johnson and Oscar M. Kriegman.

Reviews the book "Expulsion or Oppression of Business Associates: "Squeeze-Outs" in Small Enterprises," by F. Hodge O'Neal and Jordan Derwin.