The discounted present value concept plays an important part in accounting theory, often being viewed as the ideal concept of value. There is, though, a school of thought which, while recognizing the importance of the concept in decision making, argues that the primary function of financial accounting is in the assessment of achievements. It also argues that this indicates a need for ex-post measures which are conceptually distinct from discounted present value. This note complements their work by arguing that accountants do not have a comparative advantage in the determination of discounted present value for investors and that this task should be left to the stock market.

In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the inadequacies of historical cost accounting and of the need to move toward a current value system. An important development in this process was the publication in the United Kingdom of the report of the Inflation Accounting Committee chaired by F. E. P. Sandilands. This report recommends: Accounts drawn up in accordance with the principles of Current Cost Accounting [CCA] should as soon as practicable become the basic published accounts of companies.' The Committee advocated index numbers as a principal method of revaluing plant, machinery, stocks, and work in progress. The purpose of this paper is to present some empirical evidence concerning the commonality among the set of nineteen official government price indices of capital expenditure on plant and machinery2