Donald L. Tuttle, Patric H. Hendershott, Session Topic: Recognizing the Impact of Inflation: Discussion, The Journal of Finance, Vol. 30, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Meeting of the American Finance Association, San Francisco, California, December 28-30, 1974 (May, 1975), pp. 503-507

Illustrates the effects of both the purchase and pooling of interests methods of accounting for business combinations on post-combination financial statements. General rule for combining stockholders' equity accounts under the pooling of interests method; Exceptions to the general rule.

A reduced-form equation relating length of "formal schooling" to market, endowment, and ability parameters was derived for a life-cycle human capital accumulation model with alternative assumptions: (a) equal borrowing and lending rates and (b) no loans for human capital investment. Length of "formal schooling" increases when loans are unavailable. For both cases, length of "formal schooling" varies directly with length of work life, a Hicks-neutral "ability" index, and the ratio of the human capital rental rate to the price of associated inputs, and varies inversely with the discount rate, deterioration rate, and initial human capital stock.

I. Introduction, 115. — II. The timing-decision model, 117. — III. The wage and price decision, 128. — IV. Summary of conclusions, 134. — Appendix, 135.

The article discusses implications of budgets for motivation and behavior in the context of expectancy theory as developed in the psychology of motivation. The authors discuss how the expectancy model reconciles what might appear to be contradictory findings from prior studies. Budgets aid planning in that they incorporate forecasts which reflect the anticipated consequences of different combinations of plans made by management and the relevant uncontrollable events that may occur in the environment. The control function is typically a feedback process whereby information about past performance is provided to those who "control," to be utilized by them for making decisions. As a motivational tool, the budget conveys information to the subordinate about expectations of superiors regarding what constitutes successful task performance and the consequent reinforcement contingencies. The expectancy model is viewed as underlying the superior-subordinate budget relationship in two respects, as the model according to which the subordinate's motivation to perform the task is influenced via the budget; and as the model which the superior regards as determining the subordinate's motivation.

The hypothesis that megafauna extinction some 10,000 years ago was due to "overkill" by Paleolithic hunters is examined using an economic model of a replenishable resource. The large herding animals that became extinct, such as mammoth, bison, camel, and mastodon, presented low hunting cost and high kill value. The absence of appropriation provided incentives for the wastage killing evident in some kill sites, while the slow growth, long lives, and long maturation of large animals increased their vulnerability to extinction. Free-access hunting is compared with socially optimal hunting and used to interpret the development of conservationist ethics, and controls, in more recent primitive cultures.