A Unique Procedure for Allocating Common Costs from a Production Process
提出一种分配多产品生产过程中共同成本的程序，适用于采掘、农业、化工及服务业，帮助管理者合理分摊不可直接归属单个产品的成本。
A characteristic of industry is the prevalence of production processes which yield multiple products. When the costs of producing multiple products are separable, they are readily identified with individual products, so no particular problem arises in assigning a per-unit charge, or cost, for producing each product. Common costs, or joint costs, are costs which cannot be readily identified with individual products. They are especially prominent in extractive, agricultural, and chemical industries, as well as in industries where different grades of the same product are obtained. Furthermore, if the notion of a production process is taken to a more abstract level, it can be argued that common costs are also prevalent in service industries (e.g., postal delivery costs for the delivery of multiple types of mail and telephone service costs associated with providing telephone communication to multiple areas at multiple times of the day).1 In this paper, we consider the problem of allocating common costs in the production of multiple products.2 More precisely, suppose there is a production process which yields n different goods or services (or different grades of the same good or service), and to produce xi units of good i, i