ABSTRACT
Finland has a formidable accounting tradition, and for a relatively small country, its scholars have manifested a remarkable interest and activity in accounting research. Apart from the text on single-entry bookkeeping by Lilius (1862 – the first Finnish textbook on bookkeeping), there was another nineteenth-century personality who exercised considerable influence – even on an international level. It was the renowned Finnish scholar Kovero [1877-?], who published not only in Finnish (e.g. Kovero 1905, 1907-16, 1910, 1911b, 1926, 1931, 1932, 1935) but also prominently in German (1911a, 1938) as well as in English (1933, 1959).2 His publications on replacement valuation and non-realized gains, as well as on the relation between valuation and taxation, respectively (Kovero 1911a), particularly drew wide attention in some countries (e.g. Japan and Germany) but has been neglected in the Anglophone literature.3 This outstanding pioneering work is more than a mere forerunner of Limperg’s as well as Schmidt’s versions of current replacement value accounting (cf. our sections 2.4.3 and 12.2, as well as note 2 of the Introduction).
