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This article evaluates studies on accounting theory, conducted by a committee of the American Accounting Association in 1973. The most striking feature of the papers is their similarity. They are essentially two versions of the same work. Both preliminary papers consist of two principal sections: the nature of theories in the physical and social sciences; and the classes of accounting theories, as the authors are able to distinguish them. All of the papers survey pertinent works by mathematicians, philosophers and scientists, and conclude that accounting qualifies as an empirical discipline.

The article reports on the history of information on goodwill valuation. Commercial use of the English term "goodwill" is reported to have begun as early as 1571. Following a paper by Francis More on goodwill read to the Chartered Accountants' Students' Society of Edinburgh in 1891 there has been an increase in information about goodwill valuation as well as accounting in general including the paper by P.D. Leake read to the Leicester Chartered Accountants' Students' Society in 1914. The treatment of goodwill in statements on subscriptions for shares in joint stock companies is a difficult problem.

Explicit recognition of uncertainty is one feature of much recent work in managerial accounting and, more generally, work in the areas of planning and control. This has led to an increased interest in the use of subjective probability assessments. Often overlooked, however, are the possibilities for subordinates to induce organizational suboptimization via their reported subjective probability assessments. We discussed two specific problems associated with reported subjective probability assessments: (1) dishonest assessments and (2) substantively deficient assessments. Two schemes for alleviating these problems -- the use of scoring rules and Bayesian model comparison procedures -- were then presented and discussed. The limitations and speed-of-effect of each scheme were considered, yielding some nonobvious implications. The organizational framework used throughout this paper incorporated some important features from the theory of teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a list of reference materials and papers on economics, agriculture, business and finance which were published in various journals. Some of the papers in the list include, "Gino Luzzatto," by various authors, published in the journal "Muova Rivista Storica, XLIX," are two issues dedicated to the memory of Gino Luzzatto, recalling his scholarly work and his high standing as a man and a teacher, "Ricordo di Yves Renouard," by F. Melis, published in the journal "Economia e Storia, XII," "Yves Renouard, uno storico amico dell' Italia," by A. Sapori, published in the journal "Mouva Rivista Storica, XLIX," is a commemoration and a bibliography of Yves Renouard, "I beni comunali e Forganizzazione del villaggio neli' Italia superiore fino al Mille," by G.P. Bognetti, published in the journal "Rivista Storica Italiana, LXXVII," describes the institutions of the early Middle Ages on lands of collective property and the passage to lands of communal property in the eleventh century.

This section presents a bibliography of papers and other information resources related to international business published in 1965.

The article presents a list of papers on various topics related to rural sociology. One of the topics is Population, Labour Force and Migration. Under this topic the book "Beautification Efforts in North Carolina: A Statewide Study of Clean Sweep 1972," by James A. Christenson is listed. Another topic is Ecology, Use of Physical and Natural Resources Bills. Under this topic some of the books included are Bills Nelson L. and Paul W. Barkicy's "Public Investments and Population Changes in Three Rural Washington State Towns" and Ronald Bird and Julia B. Perciful's "Housing Conditions in Areas Sewed by Farmers Home Administration Housing Programs, 1970" Social Organization, Community Institution is another topic on which the books are mentioned in the article. Under this topic Frank Clemente, Dean Rojek and E. M. Beck have authored a book "Trade Patterns and Community Identity: Five Years Later." Another topic is Communication, Level Of Knowledge, Diffusion, Adoption and Planned Change. H. Bruce Bylund has authored a book "Innovativeness in the Purchase of New Grocery Products." Apart from these there are several other related topics and associated books.

This article examines the relation between second year grades in MBA program in the Graduate School of Business to earnings in business. A positive relationship has been reported between grades and earnings in both small and large business. A previous study reported that the top third of earners in both large and small business had had a higher second year MBA GPA in their respective classes. Both differences were statistically significant at the .01 level of confidence. The present paper adds additional data and elaborates upon it, and adds an additional analysis. Business students along with those in other fields appear to be increasingly hostile to the idea of grades, or particularly to the question of informing a job interviewer what the student job applicant's grades are. The student seems to assume that they would have no significant statistical relation to any measure of business success. Hence it is thought timely to report what can now be known on the subject even though the future research possibilities, at least in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford and at Harvard, have been diminished through the introduction of Pass-Fail grading since it is substantially a Pass-Pass criterion.

Recent years have witnessed a renewal of interest in the application of management science techniques to personal selling related problems. Some early applications are described in [2] [7]. Cloonan has employed simulation in examination of the salesman routing problem [3] [4]. Lodisb, in CALLPLAN, has devised an interactive call planning system designed to assist sales management and/or salesmen in allocating sales call time more efficiently. Armstrong has devised a system he labels SCHEDULE which estimates the value of calls on accounts. Hess and Samuels have designed a computer based sales districting model which is an analogue of a legislative apportionment model. The objective of this paper is to explore the nature of a call planning system entitled ALLOCATE. ALLOCATE was designed to be employed by upper sales management either as an input device for sales management decisions such as sales-territory-size, or as a vehicle for determining the effects of alternative call allocation strategies on territorial revenue over multiple time periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The varying complexity of services present in different trade centers in an area has long been observed and has formed the basis for a number of classifications of agricultural trade centers. In this paper, an attempt is made to classify centers according to complexity of types of retail services, by a precise method. It was found that the Guttman scaling technique was useful in ordering the centers according to the cumulative complexity of types of retail services. The service patterns thus arrived at were found to be related to the population changes of the centers, indicating that the classification has meaning in terms of the function of the centers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations are in constant interaction with their environment. This phenomenon has been termed in the literature as the environment organizational interface. An organization acquires information concerning changes in its environment via some scanning system. This paper presents the results of an empirical investigation of the scanning process. The relationships of scanning to different environmental states is discussed and various propositions advanced. Different environmental states (stable versus dynamic) are moderated by the determinants of hierarchical levels and functional specialties in the firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents a bibliography of papers on international business published in 1965.

It is the purpose of this paper to test empirically the relationships of per capita incomes and bilateral trade intensity in manufactures. The approach will be different in methodology from that of Linder and Fortune and will use different trade data and country coverage than that used by the latter. Linder constructed a trade matrix with columns representing trade intensities and row elements representing the relevant per capita incomes from which, by visual inspection, one could determine that the postulated relationships were verified. Fortune, on the other hand, used multiple regression analysis as the technique to test the theory as well as including an additional variable, distance, to test the trade-braking effect on trade intensities.
A few comments may be made concerning those cases in which the data fail to yield the expected results in the original test involving the 31 nations. The United States, Israel, Union of South Africa, Greece, Portugal, and Ghana are in this category. Since cross-sectional data and analysis are used in this study, it is expected that any recent and significant economic changes in any of the involved nations or affecting their international relations require some time for adjustment to occur so that cross-sectional analysis should net be expected to fully account for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective use of case materials in the business policy course is facilitated by a variety of techniques available today. The structured approach seeks to supplement and enlarge this arsenal of methods and philosophies. Structuring begins with an articulation of management's goals, followed by a definition of the specific problems and objectives to be attained. Wherever possible, relations are expressed in the form of mathematical models, followed by appropriate evaluations. The path towards a solution depends on whether a satisficing or an optimizing philosophy pervades the organization, as well as the approach feasible in a particular instance. Next, ways and means are investigated to implement the alternative solutions in such a way as to achieve the results envisioned. Provision for feedback is required, whereby accomplishments are checked against objectives, and corrective action is sought whenever such is needed. An illustrative example demonstrates how the approach is utilized. Finally, we examine the relation of structured evaluation of case materials to the manner in which problem solving occurs in actual business situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper it is proposed to take the analysis a step further and to examine ways in which production and income can be further increased once the "spare" labour resources within the unit have become fully employed. The factors examined include the development of specialization and trade within the subsistence sector, the application of improved technology, and the augmentation of available resources. Examples will again be drawn from the rural sector of the economy of Papua-New Guinea, but the argument is believed to have relevance to conditions in many primitive economies. There is nothing significantly original in theoretical analysis used here: it is little more than an adaptation to the peculiar conditions of primitive economies of elementary production and trade theory. But the adaptation seems worth making to bring out as sharply as possible policy possibilities that are often, indeed habitually, underweighted in such situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an abstract for the paper "Regional Management Overseas," by Charles R. Williams. Some observers have concluded that an industrial products or technology-oriented company should utilize a regional- approach type of organization. A consumer goods company, on the other hand, is more involved with individual national marketing problems. When consumer product companies reach a size and geographic scope where marketing strategy must be coordinated on a Europe-wide basis, it is probably necessary to utilize an on-the-spot, well-informed senior regional management group.

This section presents a list of books and published articles related to industrial management.

For 1948, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research published a list of the 100 largest quoted companies in the United Kingdom. A comparable list has been prepared for 1968, with the assistance of the Statistics Division of the Department of Trade and industry, and the object of this paper is to compare the two population of companies. The companies covered in this study are the largest zoo companies whose ordinary or preference shares were quoted on United Kingdom stock exchanges at the relevant time. Companies whose trading activities were primarily outside the United Kingdom are excluded, as are consolidated subsidiary companies of companies which are already included in the list. Companies engaged primarily in banking, finance, insurance, investment, property and shipping are also excluded. The above definitions are inevitably arbitrary. Their main objective is to define a fairly homogeneous population of quoted companies, engaged primarily in manufacturing and distribution within the United Kingdom, and to select the too largest from this population.

There have been two distinct features of recent literature on the analysis of capital projects by businesses. First, empirical investigators have accumulated evidence that typically businesses have been relying upon the pre-tax pay-back or book rate of profit return: from this conclusions have been drawn that such businesses are ignoring their liability to tax, tax incentives, problems of changing revenues over the life of assets and opportunity costs of capital. Accompanying these reports has been a steady stream of academic and government advice to businessmen urging them to use more elaborate and comprehensive calculations of earnings or savings arising from capital investments, usually by means of a discounted-cash-flow rule. The purpose of this paper is to question whether this evidence of the predominant use in businesses of simple 'traditional' measures in investment appraisal is itself sufficient to substantiate the conclusions reached. A computation relating these 'traditional' measures to a recommended discounted-cash-flow yield, which has been made by researcher A.M. Alfred, will be outlined and its implications considered. The compilation and assimilation by businessmen of bases of information such as market forecasts will be discussed and an attempt will be made to consider the function of estimated profit yield within the investment decision-taking processes that exist in organizations.

While economic policy measures have stabilized the U.S. economy to the point where most economists feel that severe business downturns may be a thing of the past, the 1969-70 recession clearly emphasizes that the economy continues to be characterized by periods of expansion and contraction. This moderation and modification of business cycles in recent times requires that the methods of cyclical analysis be expanded to include a more complete reference chronology which, ideally, should integrate the "classical" cycles and the speedup-slowdown concept of the "modern" growth cycles. The U.S. now has to deal with a more sophisticated policy problem, namely how to measure the slowdown of gross national product growth, a phenomenon which the National Bureau of Economic Research has labeled "growth recession." Inflation persisted amidst a decline in production and a rise in unemployment more strongly than was ever previously recorded. This clearly has major implications for stabilization policies and also for further research, for it prompts a reconsideration of the criteria of severity of recessions.

This article presents an abstract for the paper "Group Management, European Style," by F. Newton Parks. Parks starts by noting that despite the expansion of various forms of group management in the U.S., management in the country rarely, if ever, abandons the basic principle of one final authority. By contrast under the system commonly known as collegial management as practiced in Northern Europe, there is collective responsibility of a top management group for the conduct of the affairs of the enterprise. The decision-making process in collegial management varies from company to company but it has certain common characteristics.

The article investigates the semantic differential measurement on interprofessional communication of selected accounting concepts using the Semantic Differential technique as the way to measure the meaning of accounting concepts as they apply to accounting professionals. The author compares his research results with those derived from Andrew Haried's research article "The Semantics of Financial Statements" and finds that there are differences between the two research projects according to the semantics of accounting language. The professional groups sampled such as the CPAs generally possess concept meanings similar to the members of the other five professional user groups tested, the CPAs being capable of exchanging messages with other professionals. The prominent finding of this study is the various meanings attributed by the professional groups to the accounting concepts.

In recent years, one of the principal arguments leveled against proposed bank mergers and relaxations of restrictions on branch banking has been that consolidations of small banks into larger institutions tend to reduce the availability of bank credit to small business customers. This is said to result from the fact that small banks, unable to service large customers, must of necessity lend to small borrowers, while large banks can and do make a substantial volume of loans to large firms. The statistical foundation for this argument is the data on loans to large, medium-sized, and small borrowers by banks of various size classes, which has been developed out of the Business Loan Surveys of the U.S. Federal Reserve System. The Business Loan Survey conducted in 1957, shows that in that year over half the dollar amount of outstanding loans of the largest banks, those with deposits exceeding one billion dollars, was to large borrowers and less than 10 percent was to small borrowers. In contrast, about half the loan volume of the smallest banks was to small borrowers and most of the balance was to medium-sized customers. The intermediate size classes show a steady progression between these extremes, with bank size positively correlated with percentage of loan volume going to large borrowers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on a study of the income reducing discretionary accounting decisions which were made after a change in management in an attempt to determine whether discretionary accounting changes were more prevalent after management changes than they are in random samples of annual reports. Management can benefit from discretionary accounting decisions which reduce current income since low earnings can be blamed on old management, and the bases for future comparisons will be reduced. Second, future income would be relieved of these charges so that improved earning's trends could be reported. The "Who's News" column of "The Wall Street Journal" for the years 1966 through 1969 was scanned in an attempt to identify companies with changes in management.

The following changes to the relevance standard described in the Statement of Basic Accounting Theory (1966) have been suggested to avoid ambiguity and make the standard more verifiable: 1. Three alternative relevance standards (result relevance, decision relevance, and semantic relevance) should be recognized. In a particular application of the relevance standard, the alternative selected should be explicitly specified. 2. Results of relevance tests should be explicitly stated as dependent upon the prior information available to the user. 3. Semantic and decision relevance are binary standards. Result relevance is a continuous standard. Such changes are slight modifications rather than abrupt departures from the excellent theoretical framework developed in the 1966 monograph. The inherent limitations of an empirical relevance standard were also considered: 1. Because it is difficult to obtain experimental measurements of result relevance, we must often rely upon lower level standards such as decision relevance or semantic relevance. These standards are binary and cannot be used to rank alternatives or test for negative (result) relevance. 2. Comprehensiveness is an empirically testable continuous standard which can be substituted for the binary standard of decision relevance. Some ranking of alternatives can be achieved with this standard if the possibility of negative (result) relevance can be ignored. 3. Negative (result) relevance is an obstacle to the development of a useful relevance standard. The validity heuristic is a weak, but perhaps acceptable, temporary solution to this problem. Despite these discouraging limitations, we must keep in mind the potentially useful results of the experimental method. To the extent that meaningful empirical tests can be performed, needless controversy can be avoided. We can test the decision relevance and comprehensiveness of accounting alternatives, but we cannot test validity since it is normative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that an accounting and evaluation system of forecaster's performance is as essential as the control of operator's performance. The authors state that such an evaluation system may be used as a basis for monetary or non-monetary incentive systems although accounting and reporting of forecasting performance alone may provide motivation for forecaster accuracy. They explain that the evaluation of a forecaster's performance is based primarily on his estimates as compared with actual results.

The article discusses the restatement of assets from historical costs to current values on the occasion of a corporate merger or combination. After combining or merging corporations there may be a need to restate assets and this is decided upon whether or not the combination can be defined as a purchase or a pooling of interests. A purchase occurs when the assets of the bought company are deemed to have been purchased by the surviving company and should be restated to market figures. A pooling of interests occurs when it is decided that assets have been merged without any necessity for a transfer or purchase and should retain the bases of accountability used previously as unamortized historical costs.

The article reports on the accounting methods for lease transactions in the U.S. The financing method of accounting for leases in the financial statements of lessors is where the excess of aggregate rentals is viewed as compensation for the use of funds over the cost of property. The operating method is where the gross rents received are revenue in the period of receipt and the investment is classified with property, plant, and equipment. These two methods contain distinctions and criteria that are vague and indefinite when they should be an integrated and logical system of accounting.

The article reports on inventory calculation methods. Inventory calculation can be looked at as a set of linear transformations or functions which act as maps for the appropriate price and quantity vectors into a corresponding set of valuation scalars. Elementary matrix operations are used to examine inventory calculations. Purchase transactions can be represented on a matrix with points suggesting quantity and unit price. The quantities of purchases by years can be represented on a diagonal matrix with the fiscal year represented as its main diagonal.

This article looks at the effects of alternative accounting techniques on selected management decisions. A study is discussed which determines if various alternatives available to accountants in the presentation of financial data can have an effect on business decisions. The author considers the hypothesis that different inventory cost-flow assumptions would affect these decisions. Techniques used in the research to simulate periods of business activity are examined. The study contained reports for both operating decisions as well as firms' financial status.

The article discusses the report by Paul F. Wendt, "What Should We Teach in an Investments Course?", in which Wendt considers the study of money and banking as well as investments, and wonders how students should be prepared for all these fields. The author covers Wendt's micro approach to curriculum development, and mentions what he considers the essential topics to cover in business school which include the study of investment policy in relation to business cycles, capital gains in the long-run versus income, and investment research for individual companies.

The article presents information on a series of papers on Canadian executives published in the journal "Executives." The first article, published in the March, 1963 issue of the journal, deals with leading young executives. For the most part it is an analysis of a small number of young men who have already made their mark in Canadian business. The other two articles, published in the April and May, 1963 issue of the journal, present the results of a questionnaire sent to 2,000 subscribers to "Executive" of whom 30% replied. As 80% of the replies were from men over 40, this part is labeled "the senior executive." It is not in fact comparable to the article on the young men. The information obtained is typical of what magazines seek to demonstrate the character of their readership to advertisers, income, life insurance, products owned, investments, frequency of travel, influence on company purchasing decisions and the like.

Quantitative methods courses play an increasingly significant role in the programs of Schools of Business. However, maximum utilization of the concepts can occur only when these quantitative techniques have been integrated into the various functional areas via a faculty knowledgeable with such techniques and their applications. Lacking sufficient stimuli, this integrative process is observed to be one of an evolutionary nature. This article presents a strategy for stimulation of this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on sociology and the study of consumer behavior. The activities by which money is earned in the process of production are by no means so neglected by sociologists but the study of the disposal of the rewards of these activities has only rarely fallen within the practical scope of sociological investigation. The problems which sociologists have in moving into consumer research is one which characterizes all branches of applied social science. The sociologist, reared in a community which is centrally concerned with questions of objectivity and value-neutrality, is obviously concerned at the prospect of having to accept the values of the business community which may differ from his own and those of his colleagues. The social scientist in this position would benefit from contact with recent empirical research which suggests that in an advanced economy with discretionary income running at very high levels it is the firm which is manipulated into providing products which consumers want and are willing to purchase, especially since, in a competitive economy, there are always alternative sources of supply. And, for those sociologists who remain unconvinced of this, the question provides an excellent opportunity for the study of business ideologies. Further, a wider appreciation of what advertising and other promotional efforts can and cannot achieve is important for the study of nearly all economic activity.

The article examines the main characteristics of the international pharmaceutical industry as it functions in the developed world. It focuses on the anomalies and distortions which exist because of the peculiar structure of the drug market and of the great oligopolistic power exercised by the leading firms. The implications of the international pharmaceutical industry for developing countries are discussed. The additional social costs imposed on the developing countries by playing host to the drug multinationals are described, using the Indian case as an example.

This article discusses the reasons for the inclusion of Management Advisory Services (MAS) in the auditing functions provided by accountants. One of the main developments in the auditing profession in recent years has been the increasing tendency on the part of accountants to add MAS to the auditing functions they provide. These include managerial services such as: the design and installation of cost accounting and budget systems, sales forecasting, computerized information, and inventory control systems; the evaluation of the financial conditions of a prospective merger partner and the recruitment of financial accounting and general management personnel. These services are provided by accountants in addition to the strictly auditing functions forming the recognized base of this profession.

The section presents a list of information resources on business and management published in 1973, including the books, The Year Book of World Affairs, and Harvesting the Earth, by Georg Borgstrom.

This article presents an abstract for the paper "Determining the Feasibility of Foreign Ventures," by F. T. Haner. Haner presents a step-by-step guide for those responsible for evaluating investment opportunities in less developed countries. He starts with the initial design of the study and carries through the field investigation process down to preparation of the final report. He stresses the need to have a deliberate concept of the level of accuracy of information which will be required, pointing out that many companies are quite hazy in this regard. A number of specific suggestions are made to maximize the effectiveness of the field investigators such as having them look at documentary films about the country before departure.

Copyright of Rural Sociology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The impact of the depression on Minnesota rural trade centers, as measured by the change in number of business units from 1929 to 1933, showed a rather marked decline of 7.5 percent for small centers and of 2.6 percent for medium sized places, while the larger centers actually gained by the slight margin of 1.1 percent. Moreover, the small places while losing more heavily during the depression years failed to gain as rapidly from 1933 to 1937 as did the medium and larger places. A large part of the "recovery" gains in business units was in filling stations and eating and drinking establishments. Distance from a major trade center seems to influence the growth or decline of smaller places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the validation of sound selection instruments used for industrial and business purposes. It states that a validated instrument can encounter danger when used everyday. It considers weighted application developed by the company as the most useful tool for the new insurance agents selection. It mentions that the obtained uniform differentiation enabled the prediction of the applicants' production. It cites various maneuvering types that occurs in the items including the rapid increase of the insurance amount by the applicants, the engagement of applicants in larger number of activities, and the increase of personally recruited applicants of the field manager.

The article presents an analysis of the growth of professionalism and the development of occupational associations, in relation to the field of engineering. The author says the growth of professional influences in business has been one of the most striking developments of recent years. He believes two processes seem to be at work: the bureaucratization of the professionals and the professionalization of the bureaucrats. He notes that occupational associations provide a means for social fraternization and occupational identification.

The article discusses personal wealth of the business community in seventeenth-century England. The business community in the seventeenth century is not easy to define: such contemporaries as economist C. Molloy tied themselves in knots trying to categorize merchant and retailer, and the complexity of economist George Unwin's work stems largely from the material. The term "merchant" was conventionally reserved for overseas traders, the term "tradesman" for skilled craftsman, and the term "retailer" for those who resold the goods of others. In fact, however, the distinction between wholesaler and retailer, producer and distributor, and even clothier, retailer, and farmer was vague. The decline of specialization along the lines of the medieval guilds makes it difficult to classify the business community in this period by commodity, area and function, even in London. The occupations stated in wills and inventories relate more to status and skill than to economic function. The distinction between tradesman and merchant was economic rather than functional, a question of wealth and volume of business rather than type of trade.

While the quantitative content of business programs has increased over the last decade, there is still room for improvement. One of the problems facing many schools is lack of mathematical ability among students. This is particularly true in schools with open admission policies. As an alternative to high admission standards, a school may partition its student body on the basis of mathematical ability and offer different programs to each group. Initially all students would follow a non-terminal mathematics sequence. Those performing well in this sequence would be encouraged to elect advanced courses in mathematics. A core of quantitative business courses would be provided. Quantitative programs in the functional areas of business would be built around this core. Alternative programs would be offered for non-quantitatively oriented students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to critically describe when and how one applies simulation to business systems. Throughout, the discussion is based on a realistic example of a grocery checkout counter. The construction of both a deterministic and a stochastic simulation are explained and illustrated. Important topics covered include: the advantages and disadvantages of simulation, the formulation of system simulations, the methods of moving time, the concept and use of random numbers, tests of validity, and the analysis of results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the political, social, technological and economic undercurrents that are influenced by the interest rates in history. Throughout history monetary loans have had characteristics that permit them to be classified in four types namely the long-term productive loans, short term working capital loans, non-productive or consumer loans and loans to governments. The rates of interest have in all times been both dependent upon and inseparable from the instruments of credit and the market methods in use at the time. According to the article, the near universal decline in long-term interest rates that occurred throughout Europe during the course of the 19th century was due to the stable political environment, to improvements in market methods, to the extension of trade under peaceful conditions and to the minimal demands of governments for military financing. In areas far removed from the major financial centers and money markets credit dealings become purely individual, and are unaffected by far off market forces.

This article presents a study on the determinants and implications of the pricing of intra-firm trade by manufacturing firms operating in different countries. Intra-firm trade is defined as transactions involving international shipments of commodities, including capital, intermediate and finished goods, but excluding technology or services, between branches or affiliates under control of one firm. In manufacturing firms, transfer-pricing has remained to be a problem in the rapidly growing academic literature on the multinational enterprises and its effects on trade and development. This problem has already been recognized in various studies on economics and by economists but still continues to be undermined.

The article presents an analysis of European company accounting. It aims to substitute narrower generalizations of more limited inaccuracy to guide investors and businesspeople in their approach of company accounts. It discusses the different accounting customs of major European countries including Sweden, Norway, and Holland. Moreover, it addresses a few of the differences from Anglo-American practice both of general approach and of detail which are liable to be unfamiliar and puzzling. The author stresses that the opinions he expresses are personal and are based on his experience and on many discussions with European bankers and brokers.

Comments on an article on increasing returns to scale as a determinant of trade in the August 1969 issue of the periodical 'Canadian Journal of Economics.' Opinion on the role of factor mobility and increasing returns to scale; Distinction between absolute and relative factor prices; Views on welfare aspects of equilibrium.