Internal accounting practices at Whitbread & Company c.1890-1925

This paper examines internal accounting practices at Whitbread & Company from c. 1890 to 1925. At this time, there was an increasing interest in cost accounting, but there is little detailed extant research on general internal accounting practices of firms. The brewing sector, we suggest, is a potentially fruitful realm to further our knowledge of this time. Drawing on the Whitbread brewery archival records, we chart the internal accounting practices of the company. Our findings reveal a stable set of accounting practices, focused mainly on bookkeeping, although the firm’s auditor produced some reports which may have been useful for management decision-making. We argue these practices were highly institutionalised, and seemingly resistant to external forces present in the company’s environment

The efficiency of the Victorian British railway network: a counterfactual analysis

Network, Rail, Britain, Victorian, Competition, Regulation,

The lack of market integration in the Chinese beer and wine markets: Evidence from Stationarity Test.

Prior to economic and market reforms, China was a relatively closed society in deep economic stagnation, mainly due to excessive centralized bureaucratic control, misallocation of both investments and outputs, and generally low factor productivity. The reforms introduced in the 1970s aimed at improving the country’s economic situation through reducing (but not eliminating) centralized planning and direct control in order to correct the economic deficiencies (Perkins, 1988)