Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This paper deals with accounting literature in Spain, though mainly limited to the second half of the 20th century or slightly beyond. After an introduction discussing the fundamental change that Spanish accounting literature has undergone during this period, the paper offers first a concise survey of general studies in accounting theory. The next section discusses more specialized issues, from consolidated financial statements and option pricing to the treatment of leases and social accounting, charts of accounts as well as government accounting. Then follows a section dealing with various aspects of auditing, and subsequently one with methodological issues that range from the axiomatization of accounting to positive accounting theory. The next section covers the wide spectrum of cost and managerial accounting issues, including behavioural and environmental ones, as well as the use of artificial intelligence. The following two sections deal with accounting history (a favoured topic of Spanish accountants) and institutional issues, respectively, covering major academic accounting institutions and journals in Spain. The extensive literature available, forced us to devote limited space even to the most prominent works, and allowed us only to sketch or categorize other important publications as ‘representative samples’ of particular research directions.  

Oktay Güvemli: There are significant differences in World Congresses relevant to accounting in terms of the interest and the participation profile of countries

This paper is an approach to analyze the evolution of accounting representations in the course of time from the new history interpretative point of view. Representations such as information, certifying and control, among others, have been present in the history of the accounting profession in Colombia. They have developed following their own dynamics within the framework provided by the norms dictated by the public authorities. Their evolution demarcates a historical identity that allows the understanding of the complex ensemble of elements that shape the contemporary accounting praxis and knowledge.

Present paper reviews the first Spanish papers dealing with accounting history. The study covers from simple mentions to the subject interspersed in texts devoted to other matters up to treatises expressly consecrated to the discipline. To serve this purpose, the paper distinguishes three different stages. The first one describes the first faltering steps and embraces from 1783 up to 1880. The stage begins with the publication of Sebastián de Jócano y Madaría’s book. The second stage begins in 1880 and ends in 1900. It shows more advanced and right studies. The third one marks the beginning of an incipient systematic cultivation of accounting history in Spain. This stage goes from 1900 up to 1933. This year was published the book by José María Cañizares Zurdo, which ends the period under review.

In the line of the recent investigations developed about monasteries in Spain, this work tries toreconstruct the origin and application of the cash flow generated by the economic activity at the Monastery of “Santa María la Real de Oseira” (Ourense, Spain) throughout century XVII, beginning with the monetary annotations appearing in the Abbey´s book of states. The periodic information provided by this documentary series on the composition and quantity of the Community´s Ark, allows us to draw conclusions of the liquidity generated by this religious institution and also on the different kinds of currency used by the monks to palliate the frequent coercive disturbances of its value that knocked down the Castilian economy at that time. In addition, the data analysis allows us to study the evolution of the “reach” of currency and its mandatory removal (cash, charge rights and obligations of payment), completing an historical vision of monastery´s economic position from the financial perspective that is derived from its cash flow. This article concludes with some reflections and a results´ summary. These results show us that the information provided by the book of states allows the surrender of accounts in the “Capítulo General”, and the decisions making relative to the contributing obligationsfrom the Congregation: distribution of the “repartimentos” and control of the management of the “Media Anata”.

Constituye el fundamento del presente trabajo el estudio de la vida de los BancosOficiales Nacionales en la senda que conduce hasta el Banco de España en los aspectosrelativos a su historia, contabilidad y riesgos, en un periodo que abarca más de una centuria.El marco temporal escogido se relaciona con la fundación del primer Banco Oficial en1782 y concluye en 1890, coincidiendo con el final de la denominada segunda época delBanco de España, porque entendemos que su figura bancaria había quedado plenamenteconsolidada, y es justo antes de los nuevos cambios legislativos derivados de la Ley de 1891,si bien éstos no supusieron grandes modificaciones.Partiendo de fuentes secundarias, formadas por manuales, libros, y artículos decualquier época y procedencia, nos permitieron diseñar el armazón y contenido de estainvestigación, posteriormente nos adentramos en fuentes primarias, fundamentalmente,Memorias de los Bancos, legislación aplicable (Leyes, Estatutos, Reglamentos internos), y,por último, documentación directa obtenida del Archivo del Banco de España.

It was with particular pleasure that, several years ago, I accepted the invitation of ChuoUniversity to write a professional, biographical essay about my own experience with accounting. My relation with this university is a long-standing one. Shortly after two of my books, Accounting and Analytical Methods and Simulation of the Firm Through a Budget Computer Program, were published in the USA in 1964, Professor Kenji Aizaki (then at Chuo University) and his former student, Professor Fujio Harada, and later other scholars from Chuo University, began actively promoting my ideas in Japan. And after a two volume Japanese translation of the first of these books was published in 1972 and 1975 (through the mediation of Professor Shinzaburo Koshimura, then President of Yokohama National University), my research found fertile ground in Japan through continuing efforts of three generations of accounting academics from Chuo University. I suppose it is thanks to these endeavours that my efforts became so well known in Japan, and that during some three decades many Japanese accounting professors contacted me either personally or by correspondence. Then from 1988 to 1990 Prof. Yoshiaki Koguchi, again from Chuo University, came as a visiting scholar to the University of British Columbia, audited some of my classes, and became a good friend and collaborator, which further strengthened my ties to this university.

The Bank of Barcelona was the first regional issuing bank in Spain. Thanks to the recent recovery of the Bank of Barcelona archive, we have analysed accounting ratios of solvency, liquidity and profitability in the 1844-1856 period. The analysis of the accounting ratios shows that the Bank of Barcelona increased its level of financial leverage. Shareholder profitability increased but solvency and liquidity showed a declining trend after the financial crisis of 1847-48. In the beginning of the banking system, when strict governmental control was lacking, shareholder profitability took priority over the other business aims such as solvency and liquidity.  

The Heritage of the Spanish Navy at the Disposal of the Information and Knowledge Society. The Naval Archive of Cartagena