Chambers on Price and Price-Level Variations: Exiting Intellectual Grooves

From early in his enquiry, Chambers perceived the price variation problem in accounting to not be a separate phenomenon related to inflation or deflation, but to be the failure in conventional accounting to incorporate the full financial effects of the medium, money, in which its calculations were made and its output expressed. He absented himself from the inflation accounting focus early in the 1950s and set about an enquiry into the nature and meaning of monetary calculation and measurement, within a framework of accounting functioning to provide indications of the wealth and progress of firms. Accordingly, when the substantial literature on the topic and the report of governmental enquiry into accounting and inflation emerged during the early 1970s he addressed the various proposals by drawing upon his theory of Continuously Contemporary Accounting (CoCoA) with devastating effect.