Answer to Question #35960 in Microeconomics for sugunah

Question

Between economics profit and accounting profit,which do you think is more important for decision making? Justify your answer.

Answer 1

In the context of general management accounting, the difference between accounting profit and economic profit is simply that economic profit takes into account opportunity cost (the cash flows we gave up by choosing to devote scarce resources to one project rather than another). The basis for the notion of opportunity cost is that, since we don't have unlimited resources to invest, we are not able to invest in every single opportunity for profit, and so we must choose which projects we will invest in. And since we don't have to resources to undertake every profitable project, we also have to choose to reject some opportunties that would also be profitable. But when we reject one opportunity in favor of another, we also give up any return we would have gotten by accepting the opportunity. That profit we give up is the opportunity cost of not accepting that opportunity.
Economic Profit equals Accounting Profit less Opportunity Cost