The aim of this article first to indicate very broadly the principal areas of systematized learning, and secondly to compare and contrast accountancy and economics within the framework of these areas. Methodology and content are two integrated aspects of any area of systematized learning, so it should be made clear that sometimes dichotomizing accountancy and economic studies into either their content or methodology is merely an analytical device. It has been clarified that economics is mainly concerned with the study of behavior, while accountancy is concerned with the study of the quantification and analysis of the resultants of behavior. Metaphysics may seem a far cry from either accountancy or economic studies, yet the basic postulates of science, including the postulate of the orderliness of natural and social phenomena, stem from metaphysical analysis. Epistemology embraces studies of the nature and criteria of human knowledge, including the role of definitions, postulates, as well as inductive and deductive analyses. Both accountancy and economics have some stake in the development of metaphysics, but much more stake in the development of epistemology. In the area of accountancy the ethics principal is most often that of the practicing accountant. On the other hand, the problem of ethical behavior in economics almost always involves the behavior of others, namely the behavior of the makers of economic policy.

This article focuses on the relationship between accounting and economics. There are at least two, perhaps three, main areas of economic theory. One is microeconomic theory, in which the unit of analysis is relatively small, the central problem is the allocation of scarce resources among alternative uses, and the principal variables are quantities and prices of factors of production and finished products. The second area is macroeconomic theory in which the unit of analysis relatively large, the central problem is the level of employment of resources, and the principal variables are employment, national income, money, interest, and aggregate consumption, savings, and investment. The usefulness of economic theory is not limited to its applied aspects in social accounting. Such theory obviously has a substantial import apart from social accounting. Accounting for monetary phenomena sometimes takes the form of accounting for flows, sometimes of accounting for stocks. Irving Fisher's theory stressed the matching of money flows against the transactions of real goods and services. Keynes' monetary theory stressed the liquidity preferences of holders of money balances.

Reviews the book "The Frontiers of Economic Knowledge ," by Arthur F. Burns.

Reviews the book "Economics of National Security."