Reviews the book "Taxation of the Closely Held Corporation," by Theodore Ness and Eugene L. Vogel.

This article presents information on the feasibility of utilizing the conference call technique in accounting and related courses at the University of Texas in Austin. The failure of teachers effectively to utilize the services of practitioners can be ascribed to at least two difficulties. First, classroom visits are expensive. A one hour visit to a classroom would normally take up several hours of a guest speaker's time. If extensive travel is required, then the time factor becomes even more significant. Persons in high-level positions may be unable to give even an hour or two of their time. In addition, travel costs themselves may make visits impractical. Second, an instructor may find it unprofitable to devote an entire session to a guest speaker. He might wish to ask questions which would take but a short time to answer, but it is hardly reasonable to expect a visitor to put in a ten-minute appearance. One efficient means of introducing the views of practitioners into the classroom is the use of conference telephone calls. The feasibility of utilizing the conference call technique was recently demonstrated at The University of Texas at Austin.

Intelligent corporate financial planning has been necessary for as long as the corporate form of business enterprise has existed. Only in recent years, however, have computer technology and academic theorizing been harnessed to meet this practical need. Without wishing to minimize the impact and value of these efforts on the practice of corporate finance, we do think there are grounds for believing that the new finance “tools” have been less than maximally effective. In this article we contrast typical financial modeling theory in order to interpret the gap between the two. Then we describe a financial policy model whose characteristics might be expected to be more acceptable in practice. Finally, we discuss the implications of the theory/practice gap and our experience with this model for future scholarly activities in the modeling of financial policies.

A "socioeconomic" definition of Pareto optimality, 305. — Can the income distribution be a public good?, 306. — The political economy of the model, 307. — Alternative approaches, 310.

A. The Effective Price of Heroin Traditional representations of demand curves assume that the dollar price of a good is the only significant element of the cost to the consuming individual. For most goods, other aspects of consumption such as transaction costs and uncertainty about quality are assumed to play a minor role. Not so with heroin. Heroin is different because, first, users face significant transaction costs. Often they must search intently for an opportunity to score. In addition, in any attempt to score they risk being arrested or victimized by other addicts. The consequences of these transaction costs include withdrawal symptoms, beatings, and jail. Second, users face quality uncertainties which may be even more significant. The amount of pure heroin and the toxicity of adulterants vary widely among street bags. The possible consequences include fraud and death. Against these possible consequences of purchasing and using heroin, the dollar price may be relatively unimportant.Consequently, in describing the cost of consuming heroin, it is best to speak in terms of an effective price of heroin. The eff ective price is defined as an index including the following elements: dollar price, amount of pure heroin, toxicity of adulterants, access time, and threats of victimization and arrest. Many of these elements are uncertain quantities from the point of view of the consumer.

[The exact finite sample properties of an asymptotically unbiased but nonconsistent estimator of a structural variance are examined briefly.]