The demonstrated and likely volatility of prices during this decade suggests a review of current value accounting is in order, as of April 1975. The literature indicates a substantial acceptance of current value accounting in accounting theory, but an impressive lack of implementation in accounting practice. What has been less widely discussed, both in the media and the professional literature, is the outlook for differential price changes, for changes in relative prices. The author says that over the next five years the principal economic and accounting challenge will come from substantial and pervasive shifts in relative prices. For example, between 1972 and 1973, while the wholesale price index in the U.S. was rising by 13.8%, the farm products and processed foods and feeds portion of it rose by 30% and the industrial commodities portion by only 7.7%, a difference in rate of increase of 22.3 percentage points. In this article the author also brings out some of the conceptual issues involved in current value accounting, then he discusses some of the valuation issues, and finally identifies some of the potential analytical uses of current value data.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that both current cost and adjusted historical cost have an accounting role to play, that these techniques are essentially complementary rather than competitive, and that actual cost at the time of replacement a concept which properly should be abandoned for depreciation purposes. In the process of establishing these points one possible approach to depreciation under changing price levels will be developed which utilizes both the current fixed asset cost ("current cost") and historic cost adjusted by a general price index ("purchasing power cost") as bases for depreciation. This approach, considerably simplified for expositional purposes, has as its primary aim a meaningful statement of economic profit, but appears to have advantages for computing taxable profit and taxable gains, and for making replacement, properly considered, possible. The application of this technique would involve certain practical difficulties but they are not insurmountable.

This article studies an indifference approach to profit-volume analysis. Students of economics encounter indifference curves, in analyzing consumer behavior, welfare and international trade. Employment of this tool in accounting as well should prove practicable even at the introductory as it is likely that enrollees in introductory accounting courses either will have completed introductory economics courses or will be concurrently enrolled in them. Thus, the primary concern need not be centered around a discussion of indifference curves themselves but rather on their application to traditional accounting topics. The family of indifference curves is constructed as follows. The authors of this article assume a firm knows its average variable costs associated with each level of output.