The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics

Living Edition
| Editors: Palgrave Macmillan

Assets and Liabilities

  • Kenneth E. Boulding
Living reference work entry

Later version available View entry history

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_556-1

Abstract

The concepts of assets and liabilities are very closely related. Liabilities can be regarded as negative assets. The term ‘assets’ is related to the French ‘assez’, meaning ‘enough’. It emerges as a legal concept, particularly in laws relating to bankruptcy, the question being whether in bankruptcy assets are enough to meet all the liabilities. Historically, there has been a tendency to distinguish between real, personal and equitable assets, but these distinctions are now of little importance.

Keywords

Balance Sheet Real Asset Household Capital Household Purchase Valuation Coefficient 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© The Author(s) 1987

Authors and Affiliations

  • Kenneth E. Boulding
    • 1
  1. 1.