Lorenzo de Minico's Thought in the Development of Accounting Theory in Italy: An Understated Contribution

Abstract

The first decades of the twentieth century were years of innovation for Italian accounting theory: a new scientific approach, the Economia aziendale, was developed and affirmed as the\ud dominant paradigm. Among its main ideas were new concepts of capital and income, strongly influenced\ud by Irving Fisher. The analysis of Lorenzo de Minico’s entire scientific output demonstrates that\ud he played a significant role in the ‘revolution’ which history credits almost exclusively to Gino Zappa.\ud A critical methodological issue is confirmed: the lack of completeness in doing accounting history\ud might lead to imprecise or incomplete knowledge of the evolution of accounting. Furthermore, this article tries to demonstrate that the structure of the real economy has played an important role in the assimilation of international theories in Italy, leading accounting theory in that country to be quite far removed from the Anglo-American approach

Alberto Ceccherelli (1885–1958): pioneer in the history of accounting practice and leader in international dissemination

“…The lives and writings of many Italian accounting scholars have been analysed in the Italian-speaking literature. Some of this research has been presented in international journals or books during the last few decades, including Gino Zappa (Canziani 1994;Galassi 1996b;Viganò 1998;Dagnino and Quattrone 2006), Lorenzo De Minico (Cinquini and Marelli 2002;Fiume 2007) and Aldo Amaduzzi (Melis 2007). Nevertheless, there is still much to learn about other Italian accounting thinkers, who deserve further attention by the accounting community, for example, Pietro Onida, Carlo Masini and Paolo Emilio Cassandro.…”

The development of cost accounting in Italy, c.1800 to c.1940

“…De Minico (1935) proposed that cost be seen as an "economic synthesis" of the bundle of services of a resource purchased by a firm (Cinquini & Marelli, 2002, p.98). This proposal, which was built upon by several scholars, including Sassi (1940), Amodeo (1941) and Salzano (1959), views costs as depending on the flows of production services that are externally acquired or absorbed by production (see Cinquini & Marelli, 2002;Fiume, 2007). Amaduzzi (1939) arrived at similar conclusions in relation to the cost-volume issue, as did De Minico and Amodeo.…”

The interplay between law and accounting in the conceptualization of depreciation in Spain (1885–1939)

“…De Minico made a significant contribution to the development of accounting theory: the framework for depreciation provisions and reserves. It represented a considerable step forward for Italian accounting doctrine (because it focused on relatively neglected topics) and constructed a solid framework that has gone almost unchallenged in accounting theory to this day (Fiume, 2007).…”