The casual observer of accounting and business management is often surprised to learn that significant questions about the way in which accounting is used in decision-making remain unanswered. Yet, not until recent years has attention been focused on the seemingly important relationships among accounting, accounting systems, and the kinds of decisions which business managers make.' While the results of empirical studies undertaken to date are almost all tentative rather than conclusive, few can read them without appreciating the significance for accounting of the questions which have been considered. There are reasons to believe that the future development of accounting depends upon identifying relationships among accounting, decisions, organizational structure, and operations of accounting and information systems. The research which provides the basis for this paper was initiated to seek the answer to a simple question. Is the frequency with which accounting information is reported to management an important determinant of the decisions which managers make? A simple laboratory experiment using a business game was designed. The laboratory environment allowed participants to be divided into two groups. The first group received financial statements and other data each period, while making

Accounting and Decision Making, Advertising expenses, Discretionary expenses, Financial reporting

level, the generalizations which emerge will have correspondingly great power as principles, predictors, or guides. The task is by no means simple, and Mattessich properly disclaims belief in the perfection of the result (p. 32). First of all, some comments on generality. Although he seeks to formulate the assumptions in the most general terms, all the illustrative and explanatory comment on the assumptions, with one or two minor exceptions, has reference to business entities. It would have been of interest to have some illustration of the counterparts of the examples given, or specific examples of the interpretation to be given to the assumptions and their component terms, in the case of service organizations and economies as wholes. One may well suspect that the absence of illustration is evidence that, after all, private accounting and national accounting may not be considered as of the same class. The generality of the statements of the assumptions is indicated in each case by the formula exists.. . or some equivalent indicative. Thus, the assumption of monetary values reads: There exists a set of additive values, expressed in a monetary unit; this set is isomorphic to the system of (positive and negative) integers plus the number zero (p. 32). And to take an example of the class of assumptions which are described as place-holders: There exists a set of hypotheses determining the value assigned to an accounting transaction (p. 42). A system built up on such pure postulates escapes many of the difficulties which arise if the postulates are to be tied to statements of function. A hypothesis is itself functional; we formulate hypotheses to serve our ends. It seems This content downloaded from 207.46.13.131 on Sun, 16 Oct 2016 05:11:45 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

Lease accounting, Operating leases

Conference summary

Journal Article Optimum Tariffs and Tariff Policy Get access D. J. Horwell D. J. Horwell University of Southampton Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 33, Issue 2, April 1966, Pages 147–158, https://doi.org/10.2307/2974438 Published: 01 April 1966

Journal Article Life-Cycle Savings, Inheritance and Economic Growth Get access J. E. Meade J. E. Meade Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 33, Issue 1, January 1966, Pages 61–78, https://doi.org/10.2307/2296642 Published: 01 January 1966

Introduction, 252. — I. State preference, risk aversion, and the utility-of-income function, 254. — II. Optimal capital structure, 264. — III. Uncertainty and the discount rate for public investment, 268. — IV. Concluding remarks, 275.

In this paper we consider the specification and estimation of the Cobb-Douglas production function model.After reviewing the "traditional" specifying assumptions for the model which are based on deterministic profit maximization, we develop a model in which profits are stochastic and in which maximization of the mathematical expectation of profits is posited."Sampling theory" and Bayesian estimation techniques for this model are presented.1. INTRODUCTION IN THIS PAPER we take up the problem of specifying and estimating a model of a profit maximizing firm operating with a Cobb-Douglas production function.Our model differs from the traditional production model considered in the literature, in that we assume that: (a) the production process is neither instantaneous nor deterministic; and (b) entrepreneurs are aware of the stochastic nature of production in their profit maximizing endeavors.This fundamental conceptual difference in our approach leads us to a new model with properties different from that of the traditional model.2Also we develop both sampling theory and Bayesian estimation procedures for the new model.The order of presentation is as follows.In Section 2 we review the traditional model, and then go on in Section 3 to formulate the new model.In Section 4, sampling theory estimation procedures are developed for the new model.In contrast with the traditional model, it is found that classical least squares provides consistent estimators of the parameters of the Cobb-Douglas production function.With a normality assumption, these are also unbiased and maximum likelihood estimators.Finally, in Section 5, a Bayesian analysis of the new model is presented.2. REVIEW OF THE TRADITIONAL MODEL According to economic theory, output, inputs, and profit of a firm are determined by the production function, the definition of profit, and the conditions of profit maximization.If the production function is of the Cobb-Douglas type with two

Defense spending, Fixed price contracts, Overhead costs, Bloodhound