ABSTRACT
Utilising existing commentaries as well as analysing the products of more recent translations provides historiographical evidence regarding the ideas of two leading 1920’s European business economists, the German Fritz Schmidt and Theodore Limperg from Holland. In sifting through recent translations, this chapter exposes certain myths. Included are the suggestions that Schmidt did not address the general price-level problem in his theory and that his accounting adjustment mechanisms were incident specific and not an integral part of a theory of business economics. There is also support for the suggestion that the developments associated with modem Current Cost Accounting prescriptions, the value to the owner and the Hyde gearing proposals, were contained in the proposals of Limperg or Schmidt. Previous doubts as to the originality of Limperg’s works are also explored. Finally evidence is provided supportive of the proposition that the development of Schmidt's ideas on current value accounting, especially in published form, predates Limperg, even in his own native Dutch.
