For decades, agriculture has been central to economic growth and development in Pakistan. However, endemic rural poverty hinders the performance of agricultural production, and thus deteriorates the sustainable development perspectives of the agricultural sector and the entire country. The need for agricultural reform emphasizes raising farmers’ incomes as a cornerstone of the sustainable development of rural areas, and this study attempts to reveal the effects of foreign aid and government policies on the level of rural poverty in Pakistan. In total, 384 farmers from major agricultural areas of Pakistan completed the survey-based questionnaire. The partial least square structural equation modelling technique tested the results. They, using sustainable agriculture practices, improved agricultural production positively and significantly. Agriculture production positively and significantly reduces or mitigates poverty. This study aimed to reveal the role of foreign aid in sustaining agricultural production and eradicating rural poverty. Foreign aid positively moderated the association between sustainable agriculture practices and agricultural production. In addition, government policies negatively, yet insignificantly, moderate the association between agriculture production and poverty reduction. Furthermore, the findings indicate that agriculture production positively and significantly mediates the association between sustainable agriculture practices and poverty reduction. The study contributes to the literature by improving the understanding of linkages within the poverty-policies-aid-sustainability framework.

Foucault studied the change in the governmental practices of European countries under the influence of Enlightenment. The transition from intuitive actions of power to the rational ways of governing developed the need for experts as a group of people with professional knowledge. Our article focuses on experts as the key element of this concept. The article argues that the symmetry between governmental needs and the experts’ qualifications is the crucial factor in the application of new accounting techniques. We investigate an attempt to introduce an accounting innovation in the royal estate during the reign of Russian Empress Catherine II. The failure of this innovation can be attributed to the lack of skilled experts in public sector accounting. The authors came to this conclusion through analysis of the archival sources, including the account books of the Moscow Palace Office, which has not been widely academically discussed from that point of view before.

This paper reports the results from the study of the account books (1622-1700) of the Moscow Print Yard, the largest Russian state manufactory in the 17th century. This case confirms the existence of sophisticated calculative techniques in pre-industrial societies and adds an argument in the debate about origins of the cost accounting. Management of the Russian state owned monopoly enterprise used the original cost technique not for efficiency reasons but only for pricing and control of material, labour and financial resources. We also investigate the influence of the organizational changes at the Moscow Print Yard on the evolution of its bookkeeping practice for eighty years. The cause of calculative practice development was intuitive reaction of enterprise management to changing political and economic circumstances. The methods of product costing, pricing, expense recognition and production control are examined within the political, economic, and social context of Russia at the time. The 17th century was the epoch of the formation of the Russian state and the awareness of the state power as the driver for governing of a public life. The paper argues that the political attitudes of the state determined the organizational changes at the state manufactory and transformation of traditional bookkeeping practice to the new type of administrative activity – cost accounting.

The authors of the paper explore the life and professional activity of Stepan Mikhailovich Usov (1797-1859), as well as his views on the theory and practical implementation of new accounting techniques in agriculture. Usov was a talented researcher, an expert in agricultural sciences, political economy, history, and the publisher and editor of a number of Russian magazines. He worked hard all his life to disseminate knowledge about progressive technologies of agronomy and farm bookkeeping. Usov became one of the first lecturers in accounting, which he taught at St. Petersburg University in 1836 and this is in the focus of the study. Based on the Actor–network theory of Bruno Latour (ANT), the authors contribute to the previous literature within biographical studies and accounting education by identifying Usov’s role in the development of Russian accounting as a mediator in the network of educational institutions, which transformed accounting into a university discipline.