Present value depreciation has been explored in the literature as a means of reconciling the conflict between the internal rate of return of capital budgeting models (IRR) and the return on investment computed from financial statement data (ROI). Accounting accruals of cash flows confound the use of present value depreciation for this purpose, and a number of writers have suggested ways of recording accruals that yield to IRR-ROI consistency. This paper examines further the problems created by accounting accruals. The analysis shows that with the accruals required by the complete disaggregation of a project's net cash flows, IRR-ROI consistency often may be obtainable only at the cost of producing individual account balances that lack suitable economic interpretations.

The discounted present value concept plays an important part in accounting theory, often being viewed as the ideal concept of value. There is, though, a school of thought which, while recognizing the importance of the concept in decision making, argues that the primary function of financial accounting is in the assessment of achievements. It also argues that this indicates a need for ex-post measures which are conceptually distinct from discounted present value. This note complements their work by arguing that accountants do not have a comparative advantage in the determination of discounted present value for investors and that this task should be left to the stock market.

BETWEEN 1940 AND 1950, Kaldor [12], Goodwin [9] and Hicks [11] showed that adequate models of business cycle have to be essentially nonlinear, as only nonlinear systems allow The study of their properties is useful besides the construction of models, for example, the stochastic stability of the system, when shocks and external perturbations occur. This problem, already complex for linear systems, becomes even more complex for nonlinear systems (Kushner [15], Astrom [5]). Klein and Preston [13] and Kosobud and O'Neil [14] obtained interesting results on stochastic stability of nonlinear models of business cycles. Another interesting aspect is the dependence of the business cycle on the parameters characterizing the system. This analysis can be a sort of framework for the control of business cycles. The of stability can provide useful tools to this end. The of stability is a fusion of the two concepts of stability and qualitative behavior in the sense of topological equivalence. Andronov and Pontriagin [3] considered differential equations in two variables in a closed domain. They said that a system X is rough if, by perturbating it slightly (in the Cl-sense), one gets a system Y equivalent to X (in the sense specified in Appendix 1). Later Lefshetz [17] translated rough to structural stable. Thom [24, 25] saw stability, broadly understood, as the preservation of qualitative features under small perturbations. Smale [21, 22], Peixoto [19], and Abraham and Robbin [1] developed the giving fundamental theorems. Sotomayor [23], Andronov et al. [4], Chafee [6], and Sattinger [20] started to give good basis for the so called theory of bifurcations. Points of bifurcation are, in a parameter space, points where the topological structure changes abruptly, that is where stability fails: the creation of limit cycles from a multiple focus (Hopf bifurcation), the creation of a closed trajectory from a multiple limit cycle .... The of bifurcation can provide new criteria to prove the existence of limit cycles, besides the classical ones of Poincare and Bendixon. For example, it is possible to prove the existence of a limit cycle, without resorting to the theorem of Bendixon-Poincare, as done by Chang and Smyth [7] or to the theorem of Levison and Smyth, as done by Ichimura [16] for the Kaldor model.

Clark W. Bullard III, Anthony V. Sebald, Effects of Parametric Uncertainty and Technological Change on Input-Output Models, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 59, No. 1 (Feb., 1977), pp. 75-81

It is becomino recocnized in the United States that nutrition in the broadest sense, that is, all substances that are ingested, is a very important factor in health, perhaps the most important over which mia,n has atny control. To some extent this insight results from observation of relations between geochemistrv and health.' For example, the relationship between iodine deficiency and enildemiic goiter has been recognized for many years. Similarly the relationislhips between iron deficiency and anemiiia and betweeni flouride deficiency and clental caries are well known. Others include zinlc deficiency and dwarfism, and lithium deficiency and mental disorders. As such relationships become better understood, large opportunities to improve health through preventive measures become available. It is most unfortunate that medical research has devoted itself almost entirely to cures rather than understanding the etiology of disease. Even nmore urgent perhaps than understanding how natural geochemlistry influences health and disease is finding out how human interventions in the chemistry of the environment ar-e related to disease. T here are many such effects possible and a number have occurr-ed on a relatively large scale. Dramatic instances of heavy mletal poisoning have happened, mlost notably in Japan. A number of combustion products discharged to the atmosphere from stationary anid mlobile sources are implicated in luing disease. But the suspected relationshlips between environmental contamination and cancer are currently receiving the most attention because in many ways that is our most important disease. Cancer incidence has been rising at an average rate of approximately 1 percent a year for somne time. Heart disease is still the largest killer, accounting for about 40 percent of total deaths in 1975 according to the National Center for Health Statistics. But the death rate from heart disease went down while cancer deaths, about 20 percent of the total, went up more than 2 percent in 1975. Contrary to the impression which might be gained from some of the more dramatic stories in the press, the long term rise has been dominated by only one form of this disease, lung cancer. Since 1930 lung canicer has been rising steadily for both men and women but much more rapidly for the former. The recent upturn in lung cancer rates for women reflects the delayed (relative to men) popularity of cigarette snmoking amiiong women. Thus, the increase in female smoking in the 1930's and 1940's may shortly cause a dramatic increase in female lung canicer rates. Stomach cancer has been trending pretty steadily clownward, although quite recently cancers of the digestive tract have shown an increase and the others have been constant. The increase in lung cancer appears, as mentioned, to be strongly related to smoking. Lest one feel complacent about the situation, however (all we have to do is stop smoking and anyway smokinig is voluntary, one might say), one should recall three sets of facts. First, the cancer rate is high in the United States, accounting for a large portion of mortality, and death from cancer is often especially painful. Second, *Prl)fcssor of Econiomics and Associate Professor of Econoimiics. respectively The Univei-sity of New Mexico. 'For a review ot the evidence, see Geochemnisatrs atid th, Enovironmenot, I, National Academy of Sciences 1974.

In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the inadequacies of historical cost accounting and of the need to move toward a current value system. An important development in this process was the publication in the United Kingdom of the report of the Inflation Accounting Committee chaired by F. E. P. Sandilands. This report recommends: Accounts drawn up in accordance with the principles of Current Cost Accounting [CCA] should as soon as practicable become the basic published accounts of companies.' The Committee advocated index numbers as a principal method of revaluing plant, machinery, stocks, and work in progress. The purpose of this paper is to present some empirical evidence concerning the commonality among the set of nineteen official government price indices of capital expenditure on plant and machinery2