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The laws of accounting in late nineteenth century Britain

University of Warwick

Scholars agree that during the second half of the nineteenth century British legal judgements did not produce a coherent body of laws on accounting based on consistent and generally accepted principles of profit measurement and asset valuation. The paper questions this view by showing that underlying judicial views on accounting from 1849 to Lee v. Neuchatel in 1889 and the writings of late nineteenth century accountants, there were generally accepted "laws" of accounting, called here "capital-revenue accounting" (CRA), that are consistent with Marx's analysis of the "laws" governing the "circuit of industrial capital".

Key Words: Accounting theory • Adam Smith • capital-revenue accounting • circuits of capital • judicial views • Marx • nineteenth century accounting • Lee v Neuchatel (1889)

Accounting History, Vol. 3, No. 1, 55-94 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/103237329800300104


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