Abstract The article discusses the significance of invested cost. Accountants have shown reluctance at submerging the long developed techniques related to double entry accounts and historical cost. So they are sometimes charged with being unbending traditionalists. The current impact of changing price levels has stimulated a spirited discussion of accounting ideas. Accounting has always been concerned with doing with its present day ramifications and such, it would seem, as to show that people are in need of other experience also, particularly experience in dealing analytically and persuasively and verbally with controversial ideas. Invested cost seems to embrace more of the concept involved here than any of the other terms alone. It does this in part because invested cost is a phrase that can speak of liabilities and income as well as of assets and expense. It must be clear that expressions such as replacement costs, income expectations, fluctuation profits, lack the concreteness attached to the term invested cost.
A. C. Littleton (Tue,) studied this question.