ABSTRACT: (CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND MEASUREMENT: DEBATE AND PROPOSALS). In response to the ‘2011 Agenda Consultation’, the IASB launched in July 2013 a new Discussion Paper on the ‘Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting’. This paper aims to offer a contribution to the debate on the effectiveness of the theme of ‘Measurement’, investigating the use of the current evaluation models in the literature and practice of Financial Reporting. The paper develops a synthetic proposal by means of a historical survey on normative and thought developments in the field of measurement. Thus, the first part of the same, resumes the main steps toward the adoption of a global base of measurement and its contradictions and standstills. Afterwards, the parallel stream of accounting thought is surveyed and some contributions are extracted from this, considered useful for the normative part of the work. From this survey emerges a contraposition between ‘monistic’ vs. ‘dualistic’ conceptions of measurement. The authors, adopting a ‘dualistic’ point of view, contribute to the debate with their own proposal. This last one starts from the main contents of a comment letter send by one of the two authors to the Board and is developed, in conclusions, as a guide for distinguishing the assets and liabilities adopting a HCA vs. a FVA. A ‘mixed’ system properly that combines FVA and HCA is so outlined and, by means of it, the system tries to give a more rational base to measurement in financial reports. The ‘core idea’ is that business wealth can be shared into a ‘financial zone’ and an ‘economic’ or ‘real’ zone, with different economic functions and different conceptions of capital maintenance, each of them with its best evaluation criterion.
KEYWORDS: Conceptual Framework, Discussion Paper, Measurement
