IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-0-230-59501-9_9.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Conclusions

In: Margins of Error in Accounting

Author

Listed:
  • D. R. Myddelton

Abstract

By now it will be evident that it is hard to generalise about margins of error, either actual or potential, in different industries. For example, depreciation of tangible fixed assets was subject to very large inflation adjustments in the capital-intensive nationalised industries. Long-term contracts may be relevant in construction, less so elsewhere. Service industries tend to have very low stocks. In food retailing there are no trade debtors to provide for bad debts against. Purchased goodwill is much more important in industries where there have been many mergers and acquisitions, such as drinks and tobacco. In some industries, such as pharmaceuticals, R&D represents a large proportion of sales and profits, in others much smaller. Foreign currency questions do not matter in certain domestic industries. Defined benefit pension schemes, less widespread now than five or ten years ago, affect old companies, with many ex-employees, more than newer ones. Executive stock options are critical in some hi-tech industries.

Suggested Citation

  • D. R. Myddelton, 2009. "Conclusions," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Margins of Error in Accounting, chapter 9, pages 145-154, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-59501-9_9
    DOI: 10.1057/9780230595019_9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    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:pal:palchp:978-0-230-59501-9_9. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    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.