Calculation in the Agro-Industrial Complex: The Institutional Aspect

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to study the application of an institutional approach to product calculation to study the asymmetry of information on production costs at enterprises of the agro-industrial complex (AIC). This problem is formulated in the context of the categories “uncertainty, rational choice, opportunism”; sources of asymmetry for the crop industry are identified in the form of uncertainty of cost elements, irrationality of using methods of production accounting and choosing distribution bases, causes of opportunism of accounting staff. Within the framework of the study, the improvement of cost calculation is based on the application of the provisions of the theory of institutional economics, a systematic analysis of economic processes in the field of agriculture and AIC, the theory of accounting for production costs and calculation. The author has established that at different historical stages of the development of accounting, the calculation methodology was improved under the influence of the prevailing economic system, determined by the regulator and routines. Such criteria as the type of uncertainty, the nature of the impact on costs, the institutions formed, and the management of uncertainty reduction are substantiated and proposed as criteria determining the institutional approach to the study of calculation. In the course of the work, dialectical and logical general scientific methods were used — analysis, synthesis, abstraction, generalization, induction, deduction, analogy. We believe that the results of the study and the author’s recommendations will be useful to specialists of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation, and will also find application in educational institutions in the training of economists for agriculture.