The Valuation of Public Service Corporation Property: Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers,; vol. LXXII, June, 1911, ASCE 1190Riggs, Henry Earle
General
The Valuation of Public Service Corporation Property: Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers,; vol. LXXII, June, 1911, ASCE 1190
"The value of a property is its estimated worth at a given time,
measured in money, taking into account all the elements which add to
its usefulness or desirability as a business or profit-earning
proposition."
The view of Mr. Riggs is that:
"While ... the worth of the physical property, being the cost of
reproduction less depreciation, is not necessarily the value of the
property, ... the physical worth must bear some very definite
relation to value...."
And he is, further:
"Strongly of the conviction that this relation is such that 'value'
cannot be ascertained without a determination of physical worth."
It is exceedingly difficult to comprehend just what Mr. Riggs means when
he describes the relation between real value (which he recognizes so
clearly as value in use) and cost of replacement as "very definite."
Certainly, he does not mean that it is a constant relation, or one which
can be ascertained until there has been independent determination of
both of the aggregates whose relation it expresses. In fact, the
emphasis which Mr. Riggs places on replacement cost has led him into the
grotesque fallacy of arguing that a correct estimate of real value is
only to be attained by ascertaining: (first) cost of replacement,
(second) real value, and (third) correcting the aggregate first obtained
by applying whatever "very definite" relation (ratio) is necessary to
make it agree with the second aggregate, which was from the beginning
the only aggregate really wanted. The accuracy of this characterization
of his proposed procedure is made perfectly clear by the following
quotation:
"... the true method of valuing a corporate property is first to
determine the cost of reproduction of the property and its
depreciation, and modify this figure by any applicable positive or
negative non-physical elements of value."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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