Abstract With acquisition and disposition prices measuring both the efforts to produce results and the results produced, the principal concern of accounting is the periodic matching of costs and revenues as a test reading by which to gauge the effects of the efforts expended. This concept of "matched costs and revenues" is the main concept discussed here. The standard is simple indeed in its nature: to get a true picture of periodic results of operations, there must be charged against revenues received the actual cost incurred in the process of receiving these revenues. Before the two elements can be "matched," they must be put in some common form so that they will be comparable. The elements are both expressed, therefore, as "price-aggregates." But although costs are handled as price-aggregates it is not just to speak of them as merely price-aggregates. Costs are in reality a measure of efforts expended to produce a product. In the same way it is not enough to speak of revenues as mere price-aggregates; but they must be viewed as a measure of business accomplishment.
Robert P. Logue (Sun,) studied this question.