Journal Article Comparative Statics and the Logic of Economic Maximizing Get access Paul A. Samuelson Paul A. Samuelson Cambridge, Massachusetts Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 14, Issue 1, 1946, Pages 41–43, https://doi.org/10.2307/2295756 Published: 01 April 1946

Journal Article “Equilibrium in Multi-Process Industries” — Further Comments Get access M. A. Adelman M. A. Adelman Washington, D. C. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 60, Issue 3, May 1946, Pages 464–468, https://doi.org/10.2307/1880683 Published: 01 May 1946

ECONOMISTS who have made detailed comparative studies of wage rates within a plant or between plants in the same labormarket area are struck by the haphazard variations in such rates and by the irrationality of many intraplant and interplant differentials in wages.2 Actual wage facts seem contrary to what one might expect according to conventional wage theory. Demand and supply do not eliminate gross inequities or gross irrationality.3 Perfect competition seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Movement in response to varying rates does not take place even in the same locality. One of the most significant facts about wage rates is their variation for the same job in the same labor market.4 Instead of a single rate for the same work, there is usually a band or zone of rates ranging from the lowestto the highestpaying employer in a community. The wide diversity in plant wage levels in the same labormarket area is strikingly indicated by the local surveys made by the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in I943 and I944 in order to establish, by occupational groups and labor-market areas, brackets of sound and tested going rates.

Abstract If an example were sought from accounting to show that living language changes, the word "surplus" would be a good one to use. It was not originally a bookkeeping term, having come rather late into accounting from earlier use in law. Its antecedent in bookkeeping was profit. But before the noun "surplus" became as prominent in accounting as is the noun "profit," it passed through a long chrysalid stage in law as an adjective in the phrase "surplus profits." After the middle of the nineteenth century the term "surplus assets" appears in court cases, especially cases in Great Britain. In 1869 "whole surplus" was used in referring to assets of an enterprise in dissolution. Surplus assets, it was said, must be distributed pro rata. In 1889 the courts referred to dividing the surplus after payment of liquidation expenses. In 1896 a court tried to link the two terms by saying that surplus assets means surplus profits, and then explained that surplus assets are those remaining after payment of debts and recoupment of capital. It was perhaps not well understood until more recently that the word "profits" always carries within it a reference to "surplus assets," but that the phrase "surplus assets" does not always connote "profits."

Abstract A committee on selection of personnel was established by the American Institute of Accountants in 1943 in the U.S., to study ways and means of insuring a continuing influx of capable people into the profession of accounting. Obviously, vocational counseling would sooner or later be involved. If counseling could avoid some of the heartbreaking experiences often met in fumbling and stumbling into one's life work, it would surely be worth while to the individual, and no less to the profession. It is clear, too, that counseling could work best if it rested on factual evidence regarding the individual's capability and promise. To furnish some evidence of this kind, tests would be needed that would be revealing, that could be easily administered, and that might be so widely used as to furnish national norms as a standard of comparison. The purpose of the present project of the committee is to define the mental and personal qualities which make for success in professional accounting. It also aims to develop, in collaboration with educational institutions, a procedure whereby promising young men may be discovered and guided towards the profession establish a battery of tests and supplementary techniques.

Abstract Reviews the book "Excess Profits Taxation," by Kenneth James Curran.

Abstract Two papers in the July 1946 issue of the journal The Accounting Review were originally presented before the May meeting of the American Association of Collegiate Schools of Business in the U.S. They were, The Public Accountant of Today and Tomorrow, by John W. Queenan, and Education for Public Accounting on the Collegiate Level, by Dean H.T. Scovill. In the discussion that followed the presentation of the papers, Professor W.A. Paton considered the topic treated by Dean Scovill and later made his remarks available for use in this article. The history of cost accounting has not yet been written. But when it is, its roots will be found reaching a long way back in time. And the wonder will be that, with such a start, it could take so long to evolve into the still uncoordinated cost accounting procedures that were typical of the nineteenth century. It is easier to recognize the factors which in the twentieth century produced an extraordinary acceleration in the development of accounting systems in general and cost accounting in particular, than it is to understand why a good start was so slow in gathering momentum.