The author in the article discusses the progress of the Bureau of Placements of the American Institute of Accountants as he received a number of letters from teachers of accounting which indicate that some are not in entire sympathy with the work of the Bureau. The author attempts to give first a brief summary of the purpose for which the Bureau of Placements was organized and of what it has accomplished to date. He then attempts to answer the questions raised in the letters received from accounting teachers. However, the author also notifies that these comments do not represent the official opinion of the American Institute of Accountants nor of the Committee for Placements, and should be regarded as his personal comments. In a letter to the author, an accounting teacher objects to the statement by the author that "It has been the experience of accountancy firms that men graduated from cultural courses in the liberal arts and science develop quite as rapidly as men who have devoted most of their time to technical accounting study." The author clarifies that this sentence does not refer to men who have had the combined cultural and technical study previously referred to. This statement, moreover, was intended to encourage the academic man with desirable natural qualifications to make an application.

Paul Danos, John W. Eichenseher, Audit Industry Dynamics: Factors Affecting Changes in Client-Industry Market Shares, Journal of Accounting Research, Vol. 20, No. 2, Part II (Autumn, 1982), pp. 604-616

Learning curve model, Capital Budgeting, Productivity, Innovation

We analyze changes in unemployment, marginal labor force attachment, and participation in Canada and the United States using consistent measurement concepts. We show the importance for the comparative evolution of aggregate unemployment of changes in the fraction of those “wanting work”—the unemployed and marginally attached. We also study changes in the fraction of the nonemployed who are unemployed. Using micro data on labor market transition behavior at these margins, we find remarkably consistent results in the two countries, with the marginally attached displaying behavior lying between unemployment and nonattachment. The three nonemployment states are distinct in both countries.

This article develops and estimates a model of wage determination that isolates the effects of alcohol use on wages as mediated through human capital accumulation. Although generally insignificant, estimation results suggest that moderate alcohol use while in school or working has a positive effect on the returns to education or experience, and therefore on human capital accumulation, but heavier drinking reduces this gain slightly. Based on these results, alcohol use does not appear to adversely affect returns to education or work experience and therefore has no negative effect on the efficiency of education or experience in forming human capital.

Theoretical models of self‐employment posit that attitudes toward risk, entrepreneurial ability, and preferences for autonomy are central to the individual's decision between self‐employment and wage/salary work. I provide indirect evidence on this hypothesis by examining the relationship between drug dealing as a youth and legitimate self‐employment in later years using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. I find that drug dealers are 11%–21% more likely to choose self‐employment than non‐drug‐dealers, all else equal. After ruling out a few alternative explanations, I interpret these results as providing indirect evidence supporting the hypothesis.

Estimates from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics indicate that African-American men are one-third as likely to be self-employed as white men. The large discrepancy is due to a black transition rate into self-employment that is approximately one-half the white rate and a black transition rate out of self-employment that is twice the white rate. Using a new variation of the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique, the author finds that racial differences in asset levels and probabilities of having self-employed fathers explain a large part of the gap in the entry rate, but almost none of the gap in the exit rate.

A longitudinal establishment data set is used to assess the effect of changes in workers' compensation benefits on the incidence of lost-workday injury and illness cases in manufacturing for the years 1979-84. Higher benefits are found generally to increase lost-workday cases. However, consistent with theory, the benefit effect is smaller in larger, more highly experience-rated establishments. After initial estimates are obtained using ordinary and weighted least squares, several count data models are explored that are more appropriate for the integer injury and illness counts in the data. The results are consistent across the specifications.

Whereas previous analyses of criminal deterrence have focused on the effect of criminal enforcement on crime rates, this study analyzes the existence of compensating differentials for criminal pursuits. By analyzing the risk-rewards trade-off, this approach represents a more comprehensive test of the criminal deterrence hypothesis. The sample consisted of black inner-city youths who reported their crime participation, crime income, and self-assessed risks from crime. The risk premiums for the three principal adverse outcomes (arrest, conviction, and prison) constituted between one-half and two-thirds of all crime income on the average, providing strong support for the criminal deterrence hypothesis.

Auditing, Auditor change, Public sector, Audit quality