I. Objectives of the United States reciprocal trade program, 273. — II. A program based on tariff quotas and the growth criterion, 276. — III. Advantages and problems of a policy based on tariff quotas and the growth criterion, 281.

N international trade theory the concept of the elasticity of demand for a country's exports has had a long life. It is frequently advanced as one of the chief determinants of the effects of a currency revaluation, and recently has been the subject of some empirical studies. The justification of the first part of the present study, apart from its special interest for the country it deals with, Australia, lies in the fact that it attempts a more precise definition of the concept in measurable form than it has usually received, and that this definition leads to the study of the demand for exports one commodity at a time, instead of the demand for exports as a whole.' In the second part of the paper, similar methods are used to define and measure the elasticity of export demand with respect to income of the export market. The theoretical expressions obtained are applied to three principal Australian export commodities, using prewar data, to estimate in effect how their proceeds would have responded to a given change in the exchange rate, or in the income of the export market.

The present generation of taxpayers not only has practically all the forms of taxation known to the ancients but have to deal with new and spectacular taxes designed to produce the revenue necessary to carry on the greatest activities ever undertaken by any government. War and defense expenditures have required the imposition of taxes of dramatic proportions. The most important of these war-developed taxes has been the excess profits tax. This tax was used during the First World War and existed from 1917 to 1920. When peace returned to the country it was promptly repealed as an unnecessary peacetime tax and remained off the statute books until the imminence of war in 1940 brought it back. It remained apart of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code throughout the years 1940 to 1945. When peace again returned to the nation it was promptly repealed. The important principle of the excess profits tax is the exemption from excess profits taxation of the earning capacity of the corporation prior to the advent of the national emergency. It does not attempt to tax any profit, abnormal though it may be, so long as the profit is not due to the expanded economy as a result of the national defense effort.

The article discusses cost accounting for motor freight terminals. It is essential to the efficient operation of a motor freight terminal that management knows the cost of handling each shipment. Shipments may be divided into certain official freight classifications. In the strictly line haul operation no consideration was given to weight groups, because the cost of hauling a given load of ten shipments was the same as the cost of hauling one shipment of ten pieces, if all other things were the same. The same general outline used to develop line haul cost methods is employed to develop terminal cost, but pick-up and delivery, assembling, segregating, billing and loading freight at a terminal, involve many additional complications. In order to distribute the pick-up expenses, it is necessary to list those expenses, which are computed on a mileage basis separately from those, which are not affected, by the number of miles the truck operates. It is customary in motor transportation cost studies to divide shipments into certain weight groups, which conform to the weight groups of the tariff for the area and commodities or classes of property covered by the study.

The article discusses the disposition of special post-war reserves at the close of World War II. In the article, interest was centered primarily in only one of several types of reserves. What 134 large manufacturing corporations did with the special reserve created to cover post-war reconversion costs has been shown. In recent years there has been some criticism of methods and motives used in the creation of reserves, especially those set up for contingencies. Accountants are beginning to suggest that, because earned surplus is itself available for contingencies, there is no reason for creating a contingency reserve. While there was no need for the unused reserves and those created as a matter of conservatism, the post-war reserves that were used properly would not be subject to the above criticism. The purpose of the post-war reserve is quite different from that of contingency reserves. The purpose of the post-war reserve is the proper assignment of costs to periodic revenue. If costs are assigned properly to periodic revenue, there will be less distortion of annual income. A reserve created for such a purpose and used properly, is undoubtedly a necessary accounting procedure.