Doctoral research [1984, Vol. 11, no. 2]

              The Accounting Historians Journal
Vol. 11, No. 2
Fall 1984
DOCTORAL RESEARCH
Maureen H. Berry, Editor UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
The process of economic development, and the multitude of problems it can provoke, provides a rich field for doctoral research in many disciplines. The current selection of dissertations, which also includes studies involving relatively recent accounting and reporting innovations, illustrates the different perspectives that can illuminate various aspects of the same object of interest.
Lister's dissertation, examining banking's role in the early devel-opment of California, gives the lead. This study, using bank balance sheets for its statistical data base, shows some of the symbiotic relationships which link accounting and economic history. A second economic historian, Ababio-Appah, looking into development issues in Ghana a century later, considers the impact of ownership con-cepts on economic progress. What, he asks, are the implications of attempting to move away from the basic national philosophy of collective ownership? Agbonyitor is also concerned with develop-ment problems in Ghana: but from the standpoint of public financial management. Constant difficulties over state budget deficits result from recurring expenditure allocations. Thus, the study concen-trates on examining expenditure patterns in order to illuminate policy issues. Budget deficits constitute the focus of Shelley's re-search into the fiscal problems of American cities. Finding that fiscal stress could not be linked to financial and economic indicators, she concluded that the predominant role has to be conceded to political considerations.
Shifting from macro to micro issues of financial distress, Elkharouf tests the assumption that the international harmonization of accounting standards could improve decision making. After the extremely time-consuming exercise of restating U.S. financial state-ments in accordance with the French unified accounting system, he concluded finally that any resulting improvements in predictive ability were not statistically significant. A second relatively new accounting phenomenon concerns price-level changes. Fesmire's