Voyage Accounting, User Costs and the Treatment of Financial Transactions in the Theory of the Firm

The paper considers some of the problems associated with the indirectly measured components of financial service outputs in the System of National Accounts (SNA), termed FISIM (Financial Intermediation Services Indirectly Measured). The paper considers how to integrate financial transactions into the balance sheet and production accounts of a firm. In order to minimize the role of imputations, the paper considers a firm that raises capital at the beginning of the accounting period, engages in some form of productive activity during the period and then distributes the initial capital and any profits back to the capitalists who financed the firm. This situation corresponds roughly to merchant trading voyages made some centuries ago.