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Maureen H. Berry, Editor UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
DOCTORAL RESEARCH
Three themes run through this selection of recent dissertations in accounting and economic history: flows of investment capital, the effects of income tax regulations on the financing of selected areas of the economy, and the effects of public policy on the ac-counting profession and accounting practice. The first and second themes are linked through their focus on investment decisions, while the impact of public policy on the private sector relates the second to the third. Consequently, it is the pervasive effect of pub-lic policy on accounting-related issues which underlies all these research studies.
Flows of investment capital were the concern of Neal, Pierson Doti, and Updike. Neal looked into bond refunding, comparing the practices of public utilities and industrial firms. Pierson Doti's field was the supply of financial capital by the state banks in Cali-fornia, while Updike examined the functioning of yet another capital market: the non-reserve city national banks. The supply of capital funds to the agricultural sector was the main topic in Updike's thesis and farming was also central to Holland's study — in parti-cular, the effects of Federal taxation on a section of the Georgia egg industry. Strefeler, too, was concerned about public policy as administered through taxation: specifically, the effect the 1969 Tax Reform Act has had on donations of ordinary income property. Regulatory bodies are, of course, another mechanism through which public policy shapes private decisions. Roberts' study of the development of audit criteria by the public accounting profession details the strong influence on the auditing process of the courts and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The final study, by Moseley, reminds us how far public policy went to meet perceived needs for stronger accounting criteria, in this case control over public contract costing, when Congress established the Cost Ac-counting Standards Board.
The Evolution of Accounting Thought and Practices Related to Bond Refunding (Michigan State University, 1971, 231 pp.; 32/12,
