Fritz Schmidt,Henry Sweeney and Stabilised Accounting

Dean and Clarke (1989) argue that the German Betriebswirtschafl theorist Fritz Schmidt, who was the author of the first comprehensive replacement cost model in the literature, had a greater influence on the development of Henry Sweeney's stabilised accounting ideas than the price-level-adjustment proponents, Eugen Schmalenbach and Walter Mahlberg. This paper argues that to identify Sweeney's stabilisation ideas with Schmidt's—even those incorporating replacement costs—is misleading. Sweeney's economic orientation was fundamentally different from Schmidt's and for this reason Sweeney never fully accepted Schmidt's model. Sweeney's and Schmidt's differing economic orientations reflect national attitudinal differences that have manifested themselves in more recent inflation accounting developments.