ABSTRACT
Although his major published work on accounting spanned only four years, from 1929 to 1933, of his career as an economist, John B. Canning was author of a major treatise on accounting theory, The Economics of Accountancy. This chapter addresses the following questions: What was Canning’s background and why did he become interested in accounting? What was his impact on the accounting literature, and how was he regarded by his students? Why did he largely withdraw from the accounting literature in the 1930s? It reviews Canning’s childhood and his undergraduate and graduate years at the University of Chicago, his single-handed effort to develop a fully-fledged accounting curriculum in the economics department at Stanford University. Canning was anything but a dramatic teacher. In the 1930s, Canning published markedly less on accounting as his interests expanded beyond accounting and towards fiscal policy and the economics of unemployment and health insurance, social security and agricultural policy.
