New rules of amortization

Résumé

One of the most important problems in accounting is how to determine the methods or rules to carry out the allocation of the depreciation costs of a machine in the annual accounting. At present several empirical rules are used, but they do not cash, in our opinion, the particular features of the problem. In this paper, we tackle this problem from a Game Theoretical point of view. We try to use the most known solutions concepts in Game Theory to determine new depreciation rules. For our purpose, we define a game in a suitable way. This game allows us to apply Game Theory. The definition of the characteristic function of the game can have different forms, therefore we obtain different depreciation rules for each characteristic function. First, by using a particular characteristic function for the game, we study under what conditions the usual rules in accounting are stable, in the sense of belonging or not to the core of the game. Secondly, by using the same characteristic function, we analyze which kind of rules arise when we use the Shapley value, the nucleolus or the value of Tijs. The obtained results have simple and reasonable interpretation. A particular feature of this kind of game is that these games are a particular case of airport-games. For this reason it is possible to obtain simple expressions for the mentioned values. Lastly, we study alternative models to define the characteristic function of the game and analyze the relations with the previous results.