The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that accountants may have some notion of the complexity of the external reporting environment before they conduct rigorous empirical tests. The financial reporting environment appears to be complex since the financial decision-maker must consider the many dimensions of a single bit of information. Conceptual structure refers to an individual's potential to generate new attributes of information and discriminate between stimuli as the number of dimensions he perceives increases. Conceptual level varies for processors in their roles as financial statement users. The financial analyst who can integrate many of the diverse dimensions of financial information demonstrates an abstract conceptual structure while the investor who makes decisions by evaluating only price-earnings ratios demonstrates a relatively concrete conceptual structure. the point of maximum abstractness is constant for all conceptual structures, including the most abstract and the most concrete processors, within the same environment. If this relationship exists for financial reporting as well, the problem of finding the optimal information load appears possible.

Recent work emphasizes the primacy of differences in countries’ colonially-bequeathed property rights and legal systems for explaining differences in their subsequent economic development. Barbados and Jamaica provide a striking counter example to this long-run view of income determination. Both countries inherited property rights and legal institutions from their English colonial masters yet experienced starkly different growth trajectories in the aftermath of independence. From 1960 to 2002, Barbados’ GDP per capita grew roughly three times as fast as Jamaica’s. Consequently, the income gap between Barbados and Jamaica is now almost five times larger than at the time of independence. Since their property rights and legal systems are virtually identical, recent theories of development cannot explain the divergence between Barbados and Jamaica. Differences in macroeconomic policy choices, not differences in institutions, account for the heterogeneous growth experiences of these two Caribbean nations.

Reviews the book "Topics in Accounting and Planning," edited by Richard Mattessich.