IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/abacus/v37y2001i1p1-25.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What Are Assets and Liabilities? Where Is True North? (Accounting That my Sister Would Understand)

Author

Listed:
  • Walter P. Schuetze

Abstract

This is an article about what I think financial accounting and reporting ought to look like—about my vision that the singular focus of financial accounting and reporting should be on cash, that is, cash itself, contractual claims to cash, things (assets) that can be converted into cash, and obligations to pay cash, and that assets and liabilities should be stated at fair value in corporate balance sheets. I call this formulationTrue North. I previously have written about how we should keep financial accounting and reporting simple (‘Keep It Simple’, Accounting Horizons, June 1991, pp. 113–17). I also have written about how assets should be defined for accounting purposes (‘What Is an Asset?’, Accounting Horizons, Septem‐ber 1993, pp. 66–70). This article builds on those two earlier ones. It deals with definitions of assets and liabilities that should be recognized (that is, displayed, shown, or reported) in corporate balance sheets and how the recognized assets and liabilities should be measured when reported in those balance sheets.

Suggested Citation

  • Walter P. Schuetze, 2001. "What Are Assets and Liabilities? Where Is True North? (Accounting That my Sister Would Understand)," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 37(1), pages 1-25, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:abacus:v:37:y:2001:i:1:p:1-25
    DOI: 10.1111/1467-6281.00072
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6281.00072
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1467-6281.00072?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Allan D. Barton, 2002. "Public-Sector Accounting:A Common Reporting Framework? A Rejoinder," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 12(28), pages 41-49, November.
    2. Gwilliam, David & Jackson, Richard H.G., 2008. "Fair value in financial reporting: Problems and pitfalls in practice," Accounting forum, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 240-259.
    3. Feleaga Liliana & Feleaga Niculae & Vasile Cristina Mioara, 2008. "Conceptual Difficulties And The Feasibility Of Policies," Annals of Faculty of Economics, University of Oradea, Faculty of Economics, vol. 3(1), pages 1205-1210, May.
    4. Stewart Jones & Sheikh F. Rahman & Peter W. Wolnizer, 2004. "Accounting Reform in Australia: Contrasting Cases of Agenda Building," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 40(3), pages 379-404, October.
    5. Nancy Segura, 2008. "Contribution à la connaissance de la production de l'information financière : Le cas des provisions pour litiges," Post-Print halshs-00525982, HAL.
    6. Steinar Sars Kvifte, 2008. "Revisiting the Concepts: Time to Challenge the Asset-Liability View," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 18(1), pages 81-92, March.
    7. Frank Clarke & Graeme Dean & Erne Houghton, 2002. "Revitalising Group Accounting: Improving Accountability," Australian Accounting Review, CPA Australia, vol. 12(28), pages 58-72, November.
    8. El-Tawy, Nevine & Tollington, Tony, 2013. "Some thoughts on the recognition of assets, notably in respect of intangible assets," Accounting forum, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 67-80.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:abacus:v:37:y:2001:i:1:p:1-25. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0001-3072 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.