ABSTRACT
This chapter relates to a recurrent theme in Geoff Harcourt’s work: the relationship between the numbers conventionally produced in company accounts and the numbers which would be required from accounts to inform rational economic decisions. Geoff s interest dates from his doctoral research on the relationship between historic and current cost accounting – one of the first systematic analyses of the company accounts databank established by the National Institute (Harcourt 1958). Perhaps his best known work in the area is his 1965 OEP paper, The accountant in a Golden Age’ – a path-breaking critique of the (mis-)use of the accounting rate of return to compare the profitability of different investments, a critique re-invented many years later in the AER by Fisher and McGowan (1983).
