Allocations and Common Costs in Long-Run Investing and Pricing Decisions: An Historical Analysis

The extent to which allocated common costs should influence business decisions remains controversial in management accounting. In the finance and investment literature this issue is generally ignored or dismissed by appeals to the'incremental' principle. This article presents an historical analysis of allocations in long-run investing and pricing decisions. It is demonstrated that seminal figures in the development of both investment and price theory were conscious of the need for firms to cover common costs and generally favoured some form of allocation. The anti-allocationist position is shown to be of relatively recent origin and to have caused an inconsistency in the management accounting literature in the treatment of common costs. European costing theory is shown to have been consistently allocationist. Evidence of a return in the recent U.S. literature to the older Anglo-American, and continuing European, allocations tradition is presented.     

The use of the postal questionnaire in accounting history research

This methodological article discusses the first project in accounting history to use the postal questionnaire as a research tool. The historical context was the changing nature of the company audit in Britain, and this article outlines the process by which the questionnaire was devised, the stages through which the project developed, the data that were collected, and how these were analysed and interpreted. A significant innovation was to sample, in equal proportions, accountants who qualified in each decade from the 1920s and 1930s down to the 1980s, and direct the questioning toward their early training and careers, thereby generating historical trends in the responses. Some of the results of the survey are given here by way of illustrating the weaknesses and strengths/costs and benefits of the technique in comparison with oral history and traditional documentary sources.     

从浙江民营经济发展谈西部开发

本文在描述浙江民营经济发展的轨迹，总结浙江民营经济发展的一般意义的基础上，认为西部开发的关键在于经济发展的内生机制，而民营经济的发展有利于创建这种内生机制。论文还探讨了西部发展民营经济的初始条件和发展模式。     

论民族传统节日的保护和利用

对民族传统节日加以保护和利用具有重要的历史和现实意义。我国在传统节日的传承上存在着诸多问题,吸引人们的关注和参与度日渐式微,面临洋节日的严峻挑战。但民族传统节日植根于民间,是传承民族文化、寄托民族感情、体现民族认同感的舞台,遵循民族传统节日保护和利用的原则,不断开拓创新,必然能使其发扬光大。     

警惕我国企业集群发展中潜在问题

企业集群是当今区域经济发展规划的新趋势 ,引起了多学科领域学者关注。我国已经出现了一些企业集群的雏形 ,但是这些企业集群都存在不同的问题。以东莞、温州及部分的高新区为例 ,从各自的形成过程、发展轨迹等角度 ,讨论了各具特色的区域集群存在的不同性质的问题     

JIT生产方式及其应用策略

简要介绍了JIT生方式的基本原理及本质特征,分析了JIT生产方式给予我们的启示及我国一些企业在应用中存在的主要问题,认为JIT的思想精髓就是持续改进,不断完善,彻底杜绝浪费。据此提出了我国企业学习借鉴的策略:关性是彻底转变观念,强调打好基础,坚持持续改善,依托工业工程开发企业自己的JIT生产模式。     

Application of logistic analysis to the history of physics

Recently, two analyses have tried to put technological progress in a larger context. One interpretation hypothesizes that technological progress is likely to continue at increasingly higher rates of change. Another interpretation, which includes data from the beginning of the universe to the present, suggests that the universe is approaching a transition point in a logistic development of complexity. This logistic development is similar to the way ideas or products diffuse in a population, i.e., the rate of discovery in a field of knowledge is proportional to the amount discovered and the amount to be discovered. To test a part of this hypothesis, a leading indicator field (fundamental physics) was identified and the events in the history of this field were analyzed. Twelve subfields were identified and grouped into six stages. Each stage seemed to demonstrate a logistic-like development. By analyzing both the median time of development and the characteristic time of development of these stages, the overall development of this one field was found to suggest logistic development. These data seem to indicate that development in fundamental physics is slowing down, with at least one subfield beyond string physics yet to be developed. The data tend to support the hypothesis that a knowledge field can develop logistically.     

关于生态环境的价值

本文在分析马克思关于自然物只具有“使用价值而不是价值”以及劳动含义的基础上,指出生态环境是物质资料使用价值的源泉,生态环境具有价值、生态价值和使用价值,并进而提出度量生态环境价值和生态经济效益的方法。     

The relationship between technology and science: Some historical and philosophical reflections. Part I

This essay offers a detailed review of the literature on the relationship between technology and science. It is in two parts. Part I begins by describing science and technology, and the differences between them. It then discusses the commonly-held technology-as-applied-science (TAS) view; the origins of this view, the support for it, and the strong historical and philosophical challenges to it, beginning more than half a century ago, are explored. The development of the steam engine is then offered as a brief case study to illustrate that science-technology relations are more complex than implied by the TAS view. Part I concludes with a consideration of ontological arguments supporting the reverse view, namely that technology is often a necessary precursor to science.Part II, to be published in a following issue, explores some of the consequences of the TAS view. One consequence is that it has generated a story-line in which scientific ideas are emphasised and other factors necessary for technological innovation have been down-played. Another consequence is that, even in cases where technology does apply scientific knowledge, the process of application is often considered obvious; the difficulties of translating ideas into artefacts may not be appreciated. The essay argues for the telling of a more complex story of science-technology relations, one which recognises their historical independence in the past, and their mutual, two-way interaction in many modern fields of endeavour. It concludes with a consideration of some economic and educational implications.     

Foreign-currency transactions and the recovery of German industry in the aftermath of the First World War: the case of Schering AG

While historians have for a long time recognized the importance of the First World War to the general flow of history, business economists do not fully appreciate the impact of the war on commercial relationships. The First World War transformed the political, economic, and social context, in which business was done, forcing companies to develop new strategies and activities, some of which were almost unimaginable before August 1914. This article focuses on one aspect of doing business: foreign exchange management. It argues that Schering AG and its parent, like many German companies after the First World War, were obliged to refocus their activities around their foreign exchange exposures and that the management of foreign exchange issues contributed to a much tighter relationship between businesses, government, and business associations than had existed before the war and for which some aspects of Germany's system of corporate control were not well adapted to handle.