1、PDF外文：http:/ Journal of AustrianEconomics, 2000, 3(2): 3-19外文资料翻译 英文原文 1 CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS IN ACCOUNTING AND THE DYNAMICS OF ECONOMIC CALCULATION THOMASC. TAYLOR BACKGROUND The role of accounting as articulated inAustrian economic theory is securely fastened to the task of economic c
2、alculation. Ludwig vonMises distinguishes between prospective or anticipative calculation involving the "precalculation of expected costs and expected proceeds" relating to a planned course of action and retrospective calculation that establishes the results of past action, the "accou
3、nting of profit or loss" . And his devastating argument that the inability of the socialist planners to calculate the costs of alternative courses of action renders socialism impossible and establishes the critical role of cost accounting in business decisions under capitalism. One of the long-
4、standing difficulties in cost accounting has been the allocationof "indirect costs"tovariousobjects suchasproducts, departments, divisions, etc. For example, traditional cost accounting has long depended on predetermined overhead rates in order to apply the indirect cost of manufacuring to
5、 different products by means of some base such as direct labor cost or direct labor hours. Mises was well aware of the problem of assigning indirect costs for purposes of departmental profitability analysis. The elaborate methods of modern bookkeeping, accountancy, and business statistics provide th
6、e enterpriser with a faithful image of all his operations. He is in a position to learn how successful or unsuccessful every one of his transactions was. With the aid of these statements he can check the activities of all departments of his concern no matter how large it may be. There is, to be sure
7、, some amount of discretion in determining the distribution of overhead costs. But apart from this, the figures provide a faithful reflection of all that is going on in every branch or department. The remainder of this article will discuss more fully the problem of traditional cost allocation
8、as widely practiced today, and explain how some leading companies are implementingfundamentally new approaches to cost assignment and how these approaches create more effective tools for entrepreneurial decisions. THE PROBLEM OFTRADITIONAL COST ALLOCATION The assignment of indirect costs to products
9、, departments, and other cost objects has been a long-standing problem in cost accounting. Indirect costs are distinguished 外文资料翻译 英文原文 2 from direct costs in the fact that indirect costs require some interveningfactor or basis for being assigned to cost objects. Assigning the cost of manufac
10、turing to various products offers a typical situation.Items like raw and direct labor are directly traceableto different products, and, consequently, their costs are referred to as direct costs. On the other hand, the depreciation cost of the equipment used to produce the different products can be a
11、ssigned to the products only through some method of allocation using a charge per unit of some interveningallocation base. For almost a century now traditional costing has resorted to predetermined "overhead rates" whereby such indirect costs are first related to a specific factor like dir
12、ect labor hours or direct labor dollars. To illustrate, if for a given period of operations the anticipated total overhead cost of items such as electricity, machine setups and repairs, depreciation, supervision, and insurance is $400,000 and the total direct labor hours is expected to be 100,
13、000, an overhead rate of $4 per direct labor hour would be predetermined. The rate would then be used to assign the indirect cost of production to the different products according to the amount of direct labor hours charged to the different products. A given product orbatchof product that consumed 8
14、00 hours of direct labor would be charged $3,200 of overhead in addition to its direct materials and direct labor costs. Traditional cost accounting then has been found obsolete and deficient for today's demands for greater cost accuracy. Arbitrary cost allocations do not recognize the actual ca
15、uses of costs and thus fail to attribute costs to objects based on cause-and-effect. The seriousness of the problem has reached such proportions that in the past ten to fifteen years there has arisen a growing interest in another approach involving a radical departure from traditional cost allocatio
16、n: activity-based costing (ABC). In the following section, ABC will be explained, followed by a discussion of how some leading companies are implementing ABC in order to achieve more strategically competitive decisions. Efforts to achieve more accurate cost information demonstrate the critical role
17、of economic calculation and how market competition forces change in its methodology once its inadequacy calls for it. ACTIVITY-BASED COSTING Activity-Based costing (ABC) restates the relationship between costs and theobjects to be assigned costs. Unlike traditional cost accounting, which sees costob
18、jects like products and divisions as directly causing the consumption ofresources, ABC holds that costs, except for materials costs, are caused by theactivities that make up business operations. Cost objects necessitate the performance of certain activities. It is the 外文资料翻译 英文原文 3 activities
19、 that consume the resources. Bydetermining the costs of different activities as a first stage in the costingprocess, objects can ultimately be assigned costs according to their demandsfor activities. Separate predetermined activity rates are thus used rather thanthe amorphous overhead rates of tradi
20、tional cost allocation. ABC is fundamentally different from traditional costing because it insists upon explicit cause-and-effect connections between the various activities andcosts (or consumption of resources) as a first stage； assigning costs to objects follows in a second stage involving the lin
21、kage of objects to activities through the use of activity cost drivers. An activity cost driver is "a quantitative measure of the output of an activity" (Kaplan and Cooper 1998, p. 95). To illustrate, consider the activity of setting up a machine to process different batches of materials.
22、The activity cost driver would be setups or setup hours. Assume that total setup cost is $44,800 for a specific period of production. If the projected total number of setups is 70, then an activity rate of $640 per setup would be used to cost different products dependingon the number of setups requi
23、red.Obviously, products manufactured in small lot sizes will be assigned disproportionately more of the setup cost than those produced in large runs. To illustrate further, assume that 1,000 units of Product A are produced each period requiring 30 setups to accommodate the small individual orders of
24、 customers. Also, Product B is a large volume item involving the production and sale of 20,000 units and only 40 setups each period. Applying the setup rate of $640 per setup, Product A would be assigned $19,200 and Product B $25,600 for a total setup cost assigned of $44,800. ABC nonetheless has to
25、 deal with the fact that most costs of business operations today are fixed. In manufacturing, often the only purely variable costs relate to direct materials and to utilities such as electricity. The issue is not unique to ABC, for even traditional overhead allocation cannot avoid the necessity of a
26、pplying fixed overhead costs to products. The solution revolves around the determination of the amount of capacity ascribed to the resources assigned to each activity. To illustrate, assume engineering resources cost $280,000 each period and have the capacity to produce 4,000 engineering change orde
27、rs (the activity driver) each period. The activity rate of $70 per change order would be used to charge different products lines for using this engineering service. If during the period only 3,800 change orders were generated, a five percent reduction in activity levels, then $14,000 of engineering costs would not be assigned to products but would be reported as an unfavorable volume variance and written-off to
