ABSTRACT
It is difficult to generalise about valuation procedures; different sectors of the economy used vastly different methods at the same time. Even firms in the same locality were sometimes decades apart in terms of the sophistication of their accounting methods. The fact that this period saw massive changes in the nature, scale and organisation of business activity was no doubt partly responsible for the degree of variation. In the middle ages, for example, individual traders operated from small premises or on foot; by the end of the Industrial Revolution there were, in certain industries, factories employing hundreds of workers.
