ACCRUAL ACCOUNTING AND CASH ACCOUNTING: RELATIVE MERITS OF DERIVED ACCOUNTING INDICATOR NUMBERS

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relative merits of performance indicators derived from either an income statement and a balance sheet both based on accrual accounting, or cash flow accounting. The balance sheet number showed lower variability and a higher persistency than the cash flow accounting and the income statement numbers. This phenomenon was attributed to an income smoothing distortion and a selective market response hypothesis. One implication for the standard setting bodies may be to favour an asset/liability view of earnings rather than either a revenue/expense or cash flow view.     

中国会计评论

《中国会计评论》秉承学术、中立、公正原则,遵守中华人民共和国的各项法律,参照国际规范学术期刊的管理和编辑工作方式运行,实行匿名审稿制。     

中国会计评论

《中国会计评论》秉承学术、中立、公正原则,遵守中华人民共和国的各项法律,参照国际规范学术期刊的管理和编辑工作方式运行,实行匿名审稿制。本刊主要面向大学会计教育和学术界。本刊内容涵盖(但不局限于)财务会计、管理会计、审计、税务、公司财务管理、会计师职业道德等领域,以实证研究方法为主导。本刊也刊登高水平的书评和文献综述性文章。     

中国会计评论

《中国会计评论》秉承学术、中立、公正原则,遵守中华人民共和国的各项法律,参照国际规范学术期刊的管理和编辑工作方式运行,实行匿名审稿制。本刊主要面向大学会计教育和学术界。本刊内容涵盖(但不局限于)财务会计、管理会计、审计、税务、     

ACCOUNTING FOR SEIGNIORAGE

This paper examines anomalies in the accounting procedures for the treatment of seigniorage on the Australian note and coin issue. It explains how the substitution of coins for notes leads to the unexpected result of reducing the budget deficit     

中国会计评论

《中国会计评论》秉承学术、中立、公正原则,遵守中华人民共和国的各项法律,参照国际规范学术期刊的管理和编辑工作方式运行,实行匿名审稿制。本刊主要面向大学会计教育和学术界。     

中国会计评论

《中国会计评论》秉承学术、中立、公正原则,遵守中华人民共和国的各项法律,参照国际规范学术期刊的管理和编辑工作方式运行,实行匿名审稿制。     

中国会计评论

《中国会计评论》秉承学术、中立、公正原则，遵守中华人民共和国的各项法律，参照国际规范学术期刊的管理和编辑工作方式运行，实行匿名审稿制。     

MARX AND ACCOUNTING

Does Marx's political economy provide a theoretical foundation for understanding accounting in modern capitalism? The commentators dispute my Marxism, and contest whether my accounting is more objective than the FASB's. I show they have misunderstood Marx and the purpose of my accounting. Underlying their views is a failure to take seriously Marx's social relations of production and traditional accountability. I conclude the commentators have not challenged my claim that Marx's analysis of the circuits of industrial capital could provide a general theory of accounting.     

ACCOUNTING FOR INSECURITY

This paper argues that modern systems of budgetary control are implicated in the exploitation and production of insecure forms of employment. The flexibility of direct labour is assumed at a very basic level in some of the core techniques of costing and budgetary control. Previous historical studies of the development of these forms of control, moreover, have shown that they were used to shift the costs of economic fluctuation from capital to labour as well as to encourage the efficient utilisation of human effort. In the light of these observations, it is to be expected that the use of budgetary targets which incorporate direct labour costs will: (1) be more prevalent where the workers are least able to resist the various forms of “flexibility”; and (2) encourage recourse to redundancies where the performance of business units within a company falls below expectation. The paper then tests these hypotheses against data from a recent survey of industrial relations practice in large UK companies. The results show, firstly, that there is a strong and positive association between the proportions of females and part-timers within the workforce and the use of unit labour costs and the direct labour cost/sales ratio as performance targets. Secondly, the use of return-on-investment (R.O.I.) targets is associated with the declaration of redundancies in business units which have failed to perform satisfactorily. For those to whom insecurity of employment constitutes a social problem rather than a managerial convenience to be celebrated as “flexibility”, these findings indicate that the accounting control systems typical of the modern company constitute part of the problem. The achievement of the long-standing trade union aim of security of income and employment will depend, in part, on changing these systems of control.