In this teaching note I list some suggestions that might be useful to take into account when forecasting financial statements departing from historical data. The ideas presented in this note are the result of advising undergraduate and graduate students in the course Econ 195.96/295.96...

Conventional cost accounting assumes that the relation between cost and volume is symmetric for volume increases and decreases. We test an alternative model where costs increase more when activity rises than they decrease when activity falls by an equivalent amount. We find, for a sample of...

This paper examines the extent to which accounting systems separately identify all the costs of environmental regulation. We estimate the relation between the quot;visiblequot; cost of regulatory compliance (costs that firms' accounting systems correctly classify as quot;environmentalquot;), and...

In this paper, we seek to provide empirical documentation of the effect of Activity-Based Costing (ABC) information on product and customer-related decisions made by managers in a company. Proponents of ABC argue that when an entity implements ABC, it reaps at least two important benefits:...

Opportunity cost is a central concept in decision making. It is difficult to measure because it is the value associated with opportunities foregone. In this paper, we characterize three time-based dimensions of resources to help understand and estimate opportunity costs. These dimensions capture...

Using archival and published sources, the author studies the evolution of thinking, teaching and writing at the Harvard Business School from 1908 to 1980 in the areas of cost/management accounting, financial accounting, and management control, including information systems, and how the Business...

We derive equations that allow managers and analysts to quickly forecast percentage change in profit and perform what if analyses without the need to build spreadsheet models or develop pro-forma income statements. The equations specify the relationship between the changes in costs and profit in...

Recent developments have sparked a renewed interest concerning risk related topics in nonfinancial companies. Risk management issues directly touch the domain of management accounting and control. In Germany, topics related to the support of corporate or enterprise risk management are commonly...

Empirical studies report a gap between theoretical concepts of management accounting and the actual practice in organizations. Specifically, there is a virtual absence of literature on the individual factors that drive or hinder the adoption of sophisticated management accounting concepts. In...