ABSTRACT
The authors wish to examine some elements of the proposals of Edwards and Bell for the measurement of business income. The first is that the system required is one which adheres closely to existing conventions and procedures. If the methods of Edwards and Bell were to prevail as accepted accounting methods surely their business profit would become the accounting profit of the future. They leave the reader in little doubt that accounting profit is a meaningless or useless number; yet their solution is tied to methods which yield accounting profit. A great deal is made, and very properly, of the role of accounting information as a basis of evaluation. If yearend adjustments on the author's pattern are to suffice, some quite heroic assumptions have to be made about uniformities of changes. The real point of criticism is the gross assumption of uniformities and their treatment by averaging.
