Editorial
How is one to interpret contemporary financial events? We feel their effects, even if at a distance, but to become pro-active in the realm of causes both a way of looking and a language are needed commensurate with economic reality. This issue seeks to show how economics can reground itself by rediscovering the principles upon which it built itself but which, as our various contributors argue, were lost somewhere along the way.
The main piece in this issue of Associate! , The Master Metaphor, by Klamer and McCloskey argues that economists need to wake up from the abstract modernism that has taken hold since economics, seduced by mathematical modelling, parted company with accounting after the Second World War.
Sign of our Time features The Money View, an old-new approach that, because it stays close to balance sheets, allows us to see things more accurately ‘the last 50 years has been abstracting from this point of view’.
While Luca Pacioli is celebrated as the father of accounting, in Lessons from the Master, Sangster and Scataglini argue that his pedagogical genius is not appreciated when bookkeeping is merely treated as a mechanical process. Pacioli expected his students ‘to use actual examples and amounts from their business’ – an approach that stands in stark contrast to the abstraction of contemporary economics and business education.
Taken as a whole, the pieces provide an insightful grasp of today’s economic complexities. Given the ‘status’ of the authors, all mainstream economists, and the fact that accounting is the medium, it also seems that in this regard the link between associative economics and modern economic life generally is becoming seamless.
The AEX Page this month is mainly a reflection of this month’s theme, illustrating at the same time its topicality despite the view of many that accounting is a bore and a chore.
Accounting Corner rounds off with an autobiogaphical piece from our resident accountant-editor that affirms this month’s overall theme.
