Reviews the book "Accounting for the Individual and Family," by Neva Henrietta Radell.

Anglo-French Financial Co-operation during the War, 1914–18 J. C. Gilbert J. C. Gilbert Dundee Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 7, Issue 3, June 1940, Pages 159–168, https://doi.org/10.2307/2967403 Published: 01 June 1940

Abstract It is the purpose of this paper to discuss some of the outstanding problems of organization and procedure in the conduct of the accounting functions of the national government above the departmental level, that is to say, of central accounting and control as distinguished from the fiscal administration of individual operating agencies. The theme of this paper is the development of improved practices, and while few citizens are interested in forms of government as such, abstracted from the results they tend to foster, significant progress toward essential improvements in practice in this field is inextricably bound up with changes in the machinery of central financial control. Present practices are the logical result of present organization. The starting point is, then, an analysis of that system. The reorganization bills before the U.S. Congress in 1938 contained sweeping proposals deigned to meet the kind of difficulties that have been noticed here: the divorce of control and audit, vesting the one in an executive agency and the other in an independent office safeguarded as the Comptroller General now is; and the establishment of a Congressional Joint Committee on Public Accounts.

Abstract Accountants are just beginning to develop a consciousness of some of the problems of obsolescence that are present in connection with the use of fixed assets. This article is limited to consideration of only one question, which arises, that of separate accrual. Depreciation in this article is used to describe only the physical factors, which contribute to the retirement of fixed assets from use. The term obsolescence describes the functional or intangible factors that cause the permanent abandonment of fixed assets. Fixed assets are considered to be obsolete if they go out of use before the end of their potential physical life, because of changing economic or technical conditions. Depreciation, then, implies the gradual expiration or consumption of productive power, while obsolescence implies the abandonment of unused potential productive power. The difficulties of separating physical depreciation and obsolescence, the two dissimilar things may be too great to attempt at the present time, but accountants should recognize that they are different in nature, and that considerable progress in predicting obsolescence has been made in the past and may be expected to be made in the future.

I. Introduction. Scope of the discussion, 246.— II. The meaning of "collective demand/" 247.— III. Rational consumers' choice requires knowledge of terms on which alternatives are offered, 248.— Compulsory payment introduces an arbitrary element, 249.— Minimum requirement for maximizing consumers' satisfactions and minimizing their sacrifices, 249.— Voting on projects and revenue plans, 249.— Difficulty of defining "purpose, " 250.— The problem of "ceteris paribus" 251.— Special difficulties in mixed systems, 251.— IV. Democracy no solution, 252.— Reversing a line of expenditure, 252.— Possibility of government's performing any function not denied, 253.