ABSTRACT
The origin and persistence of the historical cost doctrine seem to have attracted little attention. There are scattered hints to the effect that, like the origin of double entry bookkeeping, its origin is remote and obscure. And there are hints that some have supposed cost-based accounting to have been the norm, a justifiable norm, since the time of Pacioli. On that supposition, departures from cost-based valuation have been regarded as anomalous. Perhaps that supposition underlies the survival of the cost doctine and related practices as “conventional accounting,” not withstanding widespread allegations of their fallacious foundations and inequitable consequences.
