The American national debt stands at $20.49 trillion as of January 2018, or roughly $63,000 for every person in the United States. The national debt has grown six-fold in the past 25 years, and borrowing only has accelerated in recent administrations. What are the factors driving such unrestrained borrowing? Is American fiscal policy different now than in an earlier era? Is there a moral dimension to public debt and, if so, how can that dimension be measured? Public Debt and the Common Good addresses these and other questions by looking to the fiscal policy of the American states. Drawing on classical themes and the longest quantitative review of state debt in the literature, James Odom expertly integrates institutional analysis with dimensions of culture to define the parameters of political freedom in a theoretically coherent way. In doing so, Odom argues that centralization and injustice, or the incapacity for the common good, can help explain state indebtedness. Contributing to ongoing scholarly debates on public debt theory, this book will be of interest to students, scholars, and practitioners who work at the intersection of political philosophy and economics, as well as those who specialize in state public policy, state politics, and federalism more generally.

Capitalism is historically pervasive. Despite attempts through the centuries to suppress or control the private ownership of commercial assets, production and trade for profit has survived and, ultimately, flourished. Against this backdrop, accounting provides a fundamental insight: the 'value' of physical and intangible capital assets that are used in production is identically equal to the sum of the debt liabilities and equity capital that are used to finance those assets. In modern times, this appears as the balance sheet relationship. In determining the 'value' of items on the balance sheet, equity capital appears as a residual calculated as the difference between the 'value' of assets and liabilities. Through the centuries, the organization of capitalist activities has changed considerably, dramatically impacting the methods used to value, trade and organize equity capital. To reflect these changes, this book is divided into four parts that roughly correspond to major historical changes in equity capital organization. The first part of this book examines the rudimentary commercial ventures that characterized trading for profit from ancient times until the contributions of the medieval scholastics that affirmed the moral value of equity capital. The second part deals with the evolution of equity capital organization used in seaborne trade of the medieval and Renaissance Italian city states and in the early colonization ventures of western European powers and ends with the emergence in the market for tradeable equity capital shares during the 17th century. The third part begins with the 1719-1720 Mississippi scheme and South Sea bubbles in northern Europe and continues to cover the transition from joint stock companies to limited liability corporations with autonomous shares in England, America and France during the 19th century. This part ends with a fundamental transition in the social conception of equity capital from a concern with equity capital organization to the problem of determining value. The final part is concerned with the evolving valuation and management of equity capital from the 1920s to the present. This period includes the improvement corporate accounting for publicly traded shares engendered by the Great Depression that has facilitated the use of 'value investing' techniques and the conflicting emergence of portfolio management methods of modern Finance. Equity Capital is aimed at providing material relevant for academic presentations of equity valuation history and methods, and is targeted at researchers, academics, students and professionals alike.

Confused by accounting? Problem solved.

"Schaum's Outline of Principles of Accounting I" helps you understand basic accounting concepts and offer extra practice on topics such as debits, credits, the chart of accounts, the ledger, inventory measurement, net realizable value, recovery of bad debts, and methods for computing interest. Coverage also includes fixed assets, depreciation and scrap value, methods of depreciation, payroll, and payroll taxes.

The United Dutch East India Company was the first public company, preceding the formation of the English East-India Company by over 40 years. Its fame as the first public company which heralded the transition from feudalism to modern capitalism and its remarkable financial success for nearly two centuries ensure its importance in the history of capitalism. Although a publicly owned, highly complex and diversified business, and commonly agreed to be the largest and most profitable business in the 17th century, throughout its existence the Dutch East-India Company never produced public accounts of its financial affairs which would have allowed investors to judge the performance of the Company. Its financial accounting, which changed little during its lifetime, was not designed as an aid to rational investment decision-making by communicating the Company's financial performance but to be a means of promoting sound stewardship by senior management. This study examines the contributions of accounting to the remarkable success of the Dutch East-India Company and the influences on these accounting practices. From the time that the German economic historian Werner Sombart proposed that accounting techniques, most especially double-entry bookkeeping, were critical to the development of modern capitalism and the public company, historians and accounting scholars have debated the extent and importance of these contributions. The Dutch East-India Company was a capitalistic enterprise that had a public, permanent capital and its principal objective was to continually increase profit by reinvesting its returns in the business. Rather than the organisation and management of the Dutch East-India Company reflecting the perceived benefits of a particular bookkeeping method, the supremacy that it achieved and maintained in a very hazardous business at a time of recurring conflict between European states was a consequence of the practicalities of 17th century business and The Netherlands' unique, threatening natural environment which shaped its social and political institutions.

The interrelations between accounting and food have been hitherto neglected at an international level. This regret is particularly meaningful with regards to Italy, where 'Food', besides being a physiological need to satisfy, is one of the main pillars of the 'Made in Italy' Industry, and the so-called Italian life-style, which has become a part of the popular culture. Accounting and Food seeks to explore the accounting, business and financial history of some of the most prestigious Italian food producers. Moreover, given that "Food" has been at the center of production and trade throughout the history of mankind, food production and commerce will be investigated from the critical angles of accounting, accountants and merchants. Relatedly, the interconnected history of the Food fairs and expositions of the major Italian trade centers will be also unveiled. Accounting and Food examines the role of accounting, accountants and merchants in food production and international trade (e.g., grain, wine, etc...) as well as considering the history of food producers, paying particular attention to the role played by women entrepreneurs over time. Finally the book explores the interrelations of accounting, food and state, local authorities and social institutions, in particular in so far these latter institutions were involved in the Political economy, regulation, allocation and distribution of food to populations and societies. Accounting and Food will be of particular interest to researches and scholars in the field of accounting history but also to those working in the areas of regional development, regional economics, food and sociology and other related disciplines.

In a global competitive economic environment, resources that are scarce or irreplicable are a source of sustained competitive advantage for companies and organizations. Knowledge-based resources are a major and increasing driver of long term competitive advantage. Most accounting standards however do not allow for knowledge-based resource calculations, including the most important of these, intellectual capital. Intellectual capital is the collective knowledge, documented and otherwise, of individuals in an organization. In the absence of accounting standards to numerically evaluate intellectual capital, some institutions have devised their own reports and statements. But why should companies, universities, and research centers measure these resources? How are intellectual capital statements built? How does one set targets, and what indicators should they include? This book reviews the development of the field of intellectual capital reporting, including core concepts, latest developments, the main components of intellectual capital, how a statement is built, and key indicators of each component. It further analyzes experiences from a variety of pioneering companies and institutions around the globe in measuring intellectual capital, including case studies from educational and research institutions, and provides crucial transnational comparisons. Authors Ordonez de Pablos and Edvinsson examine the challenges and next steps for the harmonization of intellectual capital reports, consider the creation of a special international agency for intellectual capital reporting standards, and evaluate the weaknesses of current standards and how they might be overcome.

The Origins Of Accounting Culture aim at studying the origins of the accounting culture in Venice, with a specific focus on accounting education. The period covered by the work ranges from Luca Pacioli to the foundation (in 1868) of the Royal Advanced School of Commerce (Regia Scuola Superiore di Commercio), that in 2018 is celebrating its 150 anniversary as Ca' Foscari University of Venice. Ever since the Middle Ages, Venice was home of a number of favourable circumstances that have been accumulating over the years. As a trading city par excellence, Venice allowed the spreading of the bookkeeping at first among firms and then in the public administration that was much in need of sophisticated accounting principles for the purpose of controlling its activities. Venice was among the first cities to implement Gutenberg print method and it quickly became the most important city in the world in the publishing industry, allowing printing and spreading the first handbooks about double-entry bookkeeping and merchant studies. The Origins Of Accounting Culture goes beyond the study of Luca Pacioli and tackles in a more organic and holistic way the social and economic conditions that allowed the accounting culture to spread in Venice. This book will be a vital resource to academics and researchers in the fields of Accounting, Accounting History, Economic Development and related disciplines.

Successful innovation is a true challenge and especially when today's companies are intertwined in close inter-organisational relationships and networks with e.g. customers and suppliers. Research has indicated that accounting can play important roles in such innovation processes, but there is little in-depth systematic knowledge about this issue. Accounting, Innovation and Inter-Organisational Relationships gathers leading researchers from all around the world to argue for the importance of more systematic knowledge about accounting, innovation and inter-organisational relationships. Accounting, Innovation and Inter-Organisational Relationships thus becomes an important source for researchers and practitioners interested in accounting and inter-organisational relationships as well as the related disciplines of management, marketing, innovation and strategy.

This collection of memorial articles and selected obituaries highlights the careers and contributions to accounting practice, the accounting profession, and the accounting literature of leading American figures in the 20th century. The memorial articles do much more than recite their subject's career. More importantly, they discuss and assess their subject's role in influencing the course of accounting practice and the profession as well as the evolution of their influential writings, revealing the names of the accounting leaders and leading thinkers of the past century. Memorial Articles for 20th Century American Accounting Leaders is useful in providing students and young researchers with a rich source of intelligence on the leaders who have established norms of practice, advanced the profession, and set the terms of debate in the literature - leaders who are cited and even quoted but who are known mostly as names without a full-bodied treatment of their backgrounds and broader roles in shaping the accounting literature.

'Accounting for Business' is ideal for undergraduate students on business and accounting courses who need to understand the nuts and bolts of financial accounting. This popular textbook has always enjoyed a deserved reputation for accessibility and thoroughness. Now in its third edition, its contents have been fully updated and restructured to make them even easier to use. Readers will benefit from the coverage of current accounting practices and legislation, in addition to the range of worked examples and self-test activities throughout the book.
'Accounting for Business' clearly explains accounting information's role in making sound business decisions and focuses upon the aspects of accounting practice which are most relevant to the non-specialist manager. It is ideal for first year undergraduates of business studies, higher students and those pursuing professional accountancy qualifications.
This third edition has been restructured, to further enhance its 'student centred' approach. The content has now been broken down into 25 roughly equivalent 'bite-sized' individual study topics. Each of these requires 6 hours of study time, enabling this book to support a full scale semester course with two topics a week, or a full year course at one topic a week.
Includes a wide selection of topical case studies, with a broad spread of international examples.
Designed to support a lecture programme and independent learning
Student centred and student tested
Worked examples and self-test activities throughout

First published in 1921, this book is intended to provide a comprehensive overview of economics to beginners, with only the more intricate and controversial subjects - such as economic rent - being omitted for the sake of clarity. The subject is dealt with as concretely as possible with extensive descriptions and examples provided to further elucidate the subject while avoiding unnecessary technicalities. The arrangement of the material is based on the author's experience of teaching economics and postpones the more difficult elements to the end of the book in order to provide a more thorough grounding in the essentials before introducing them to the reader.

Contemporary Environmental Accounting: Issues, Concepts and Practice has been written by two of the world's leading experts in the field in order to provide the most comprehensive and state-of-the-art textbook on environmental accounting yet attempted. The book is suitable for both undergraduate and graduate students and their teachers, professional accountants, and corporate and organisational managers. Although no prior knowledge of environmental accounting is necessary to understand the critical issues at stake, academic accountants will also find that the book provides a useful introduction to the topic. The goals of the book are to discuss and illustrate contemporary conceptual approaches to environmental accounting; to make readers aware of crucial controversial topics; and to offer practical examples of how the concepts have been applied throughout Europe, North America and Australia. In order to increase the usefulness of the book for relevant courses, each chapter concludes with a set of questions for review. This book is essential reading for all those who are interested in how environmental issues influence accounting. A solutions manual is available on request with the purchase of this book.

Series Information:
New Works in Accounting History

Have you recently been promoted? Are you starting a new business? Do you suddenly find that you need to know more about finances than you ever expected, but have no time for formal training? If so, you need Accounting and Finance for the Non-Financial Executive. Whether you are a newly promoted middle manager or executive, a marketing manager of a small company, an entrepreneur, or own your own business, your results will be measured in dollars and cents. You need to know the basics of finance and accounting to make sound business decisions and become successful.
Shim shows you the strategies for evaluating investment decisions such as return on investment analysis. You will see what you need to know, what to ask, which tools are important, what to look for, what to do, and how to do it. Easy to read and useful, the book presents many practical examples, illustrations, guidelines, measures, rules of thumb, graphs, diagrams, and tables that make comprehending the subject easy.
Accounting and Finance for the Non-Financial Executive prepares you for additional managerial responsibilities. You will be better equipped to prepare, appraise, evaluate, and approve plans to accomplish departmental objectives. You will be able to back up your recommendations with carefully prepared financial support. Whether they are based on marketing, production, or personnel, by learning how to think in terms of finance and accounting you can intelligently express your ideas.

This volume describes a range of experiences of internal audit in higher education institutions from the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Germany. It presents approaches to best practice designed to enable readers to assess and develop their own audit procedures.

IT governance seems to be one of the best strategies to optimize IT assets in an economic context dominated by information, innovation, and the race for performance. The multiplication of internal and external data and increased digital management, collaboration, and sharing platforms exposes organizations to ever-growing risks. Understanding the threats, assessing the risks, adapting the organization, selecting and implementing the appropriate controls, and implementing a management system are the activities required to establish proactive security governance that will provide management and customers the assurance of an effective mechanism to manage risks. IT Governance and Information Security: Guides, Standards, and Frameworks is a fundamental resource to discover IT governance and information security. This book focuses on the guides, standards, and maturity frameworks for adopting an efficient IT governance and information security strategy in the organization. It describes numerous case studies from an international perspective and brings together industry standards and research from scientific databases. In this way, this book clearly illustrates the issues, problems, and trends related to the topic while promoting the international perspectives of readers. This book offers comprehensive coverage of the essential topics, including: IT governance guides and practices; IT service management as a key pillar for IT governance; Cloud computing as a key pillar for Agile IT governance; Information security governance and maturity frameworks. In this new book, the authors share their experience to help you navigate today's dangerous information security terrain and take proactive steps to measure your company's IT governance and information security maturity and prepare your organization to survive, thrive, and keep your data safe. It aspires to provide a relevant reference for executive managers, CISOs, cybersecurity professionals, engineers, and researchers interested in exploring and implementing efficient IT governance and information security strategies.

Series Information:
New Works in Accounting History

The main purpose of this book is to describe the variety of drinking occasions that exist around the world, primarily in modern, industrialized countries. As such, it celebrates the diversity of normal drinking behavior and illustrates a wide range of beneficial drinking patterns. Attention is also paid to the relations between drink and culture that prevail in non-Western societies and in developing countries. The aims of the book are twofold: to deal directly with the challenge of how to define responsible drinking in the face of the world's many different drinking styles, and to portray the many ways in which people have thought about or used alcohol as an integral part of their culture.
The contents includes chapters on when, where, how, what, and why people drink, as well as who drinks and who doesn't who doesn't. By concentrating on descriptions of normal occasions, it distinguishes these as clearly as possible from abnormal or inappropriate occasions. The outgrowth of more than forty years of research, Drinking Occasions demonstrates how well-integrated normal drinking occasions can be with many other aspects of human life. The challenge for alcohol policy around the world is to create an in which the beneficial potential of moderate drinking is maximized and the harmful potential of excessive drinking minimized. Drinking Occasions contributes to this discussion by providing an unbiased account of what actually goes on when people decide to have a drink. The book is also a fascinating look at the various ways in which alcohol has become integrated into people's lives around the world.

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Public corporations and private businesses operate in an increasingly complex, uncertain, and interconnected world. When evaluating investment decisions, business managers can no longer base their decisions primarily on expected financial return. They now must now consider a host of performance value measures (i.e., criteria) pertaining to issues such as environmental and social governance, sustainability, and stakeholder satisfaction. In addition, corporate managers must ensure that their investment decisions are aligned with the company’s vision, mission, and values in order to maintain investor confidence and protect brand image. Lastly, to be truly successful, business managers must assess the risks associated with each performance measure and manage their impacts during project implementation. This book takes a pragmatic business and economics view towards evaluating competing investment alternatives and/or capital project strategies. It provides a practical step-by- step process using a structured decision analysis framework to evaluate, understand, quantify, and measure project invesment strategies in light of multiple stakeholder objectives and success criteria. This process assists in helping stakeholders (internal and external) achieve a shared understanding of project issues and to facilitate convergence towards a mutually acceptable solution. The approach considers available choices, identified uncertainties, constraints, necessary tradeoffs, and preferences so as to identify solutions that maximize overall benefits while minimizing overall costs and risk. A real world case study is presented in the early chapters and the process steps are demonstrated through application to this case study. Recent advances in technology allow for investment strategies to be evaluated against multiple criteria within one integrated platform. This book guides the reader in performing multi-criteria decision analysis, including the use of Monte Carlo simulation, within an MS Excel environment using native MS Excel and as well as add-in programs such Palisades Decision Tools suite. Example model structures, screen shots, formulas, and output results are provided throughout the book using an illustrative case study.

Accounting, often described as "the language of business", requires a diverse set of written, listening and oral communication skills if those who practise it are to be effective. Given the pace of change relating to, for example, the evolution of international accounting standards and the demands for greater transparency, accountants must be clear, responsive, and audience-focussed communicators. Employers of accountants consistently comment on the need for their new graduate recruits and trainees to have strong written, oral, and interpersonal communication skills. In this light, accounting educators face the challenge of designing and delivering programmes that reflect professional expectations on the part of employers and clients, and educating students on how to make informed communication choices in order to achieve desired results and to build good working relationships. The chapters in this book deal with such topics as accounting students' perceptions of oral communication skills; competence-based writing skills; and the development of listening skills. This book is derived from articles originally published in Accounting Education: an international journal.

The Second Edition of "The Essential Guide to Internal Auditing" is a condensed version of the "Handbook of Internal Auditing, " Third Edition. It shows internal auditors and students in the field how to understand the audit context and how this context fits into the wider corporate agenda. The new context is set firmly within the corporate governance, risk management, and internal control arena. The new edition includes expanded coverage on risk management and is updated throughout to reflect the new IIA standards and current practice advisories. It also includes many helpful models, practical guidance and checklists.

This text aims to provide an in-depth review of recent historical research on the emergence and maturation of institutionalized public accountancy in Scotland from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Individual contributions cover a range of historical studies including the original foundations and founders, the early competitive struggles with other bodies, the nature of Victorian public practice, individual successes and failures, and the gender issue.

The greatest concern for all Americans today - leaders and followers alike - is how their prosperity seems to depend on a shrinking foundation of technology-only growth. And the onset of artificial intelligence only threatens to marginalize people even more with job loss and increasing isolation inside the few remaining jobs that it will leave behind. This book helps us understand that business growth fueled by labor productivity does not rely on leadership as we've come to celebrate it, but on our ability to sustain loyalty and commitment to one another- a following if you will - inside and outside our workplaces. When we recognize and understand our historical Followership Cycles, we can begin to restore our workplaces to their lost role as a place to meet the demand of all Americans for a better future. This illuminating book: Provides a new, sustainable growth model based in the socioeconomic realities of modern America and the world it wants to lead - a new Followership System. Tells the story of how one profession, on the brink of disappearing into irrelevance, will lead the new Decision Economy into the 21st century. Demonstrates the development of the "leaderless" specialists who will manage evidence together to pursue a Reason-to-Grow. Stresses the importance of charging all C-Suite executives with leading a continuous process of discovering, articulating and then defending those stakeholder agreements to share purpose. Reveals, not the technology infrastructure, but the social architecture that organizations will use to build new social capital - the Followership that will propel our New Giants to future greatness. New Giants Rising takes us on a journey of the Followership Cycles of our recent past. And, more importantly, it puts forth a plan of action - voiced very simply by Henry Ford during the last cycle over a century ago when he faced the same moment then as we do now: "Coming Together is the Start. Keeping Together is Progress. Working Together is Success."

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A New York Times bestseller and one of the Ten Best Business Books of 2013 by WealthManagement.com, this book brings a new vision of the value of debt in the management of individual and family wealth In this groundbreaking book, author Tom Anderson argues that, despite the reflex aversion most people have to debt an aversion that is vociferously preached by most personal finance authors wealthy individuals and families, as well as their financial advisors, have everything to gain and nothing to lose by learning to think holistically about debt. Anderson explains why, if strategically deployed, debt can be of enormous long-term benefit in the management of individual and family wealth. More importantly, he schools you in time-tested strategies for using debt to steadily build wealth, to generate tax-efficient retirement income, to provide a reliable source of funds in times of crisis and financial setback, and more. * Takes a "strategic debt" approach to personal wealth management, emphasizing the need to appreciate the value of "indebted strengths" and for acquiring the tools needed to take advantage of those strengths * Addresses how to determine your optimal debt ratio, or your debt "sweet spot" * A companion website contains a proprietary tool for calculating your own optimal debt ratio, which enables you to develop a personal wealth balance sheet Offering a bold new vision of debt as a strategic asset in the management of individual and family wealth, The Value of Debt is an important resource for financial advisors, wealthy families, family offices, and professional investors.