The usefulness of reporting comprehensive income has been the subject of research in
various countries. A number of research papers explore various aspects of reporting
comprehensive income, including measurement, level of aggregation and the location of
reported components.
Required
(a) Explain briefly what Bamber, Jiang, Petroni and Wang find, for their sample of US
companies, in their research paper entitled ‘Comprehensive Income: Who’s Afraid of
Performance Reporting?’ Would the evidence provided by Bamber et al. be relevant
to Australian listed companies? Give reasons.
(b) Explain briefly what Goncharov and Hodgson find in their review of measuring and
reporting income in 16 European countries.
(c) Explain briefly what Kanagaretnam, Mathieu and Shehata find in their investigation of
the usefulness of comprehensive income reporting in Canada.
(d) Explain briefly what Hodgson and Russell find in their investigation of comprehensive
income.
(e) Based on your analysis in parts (a) to (d), prepare a letter to the AASB on the implications
of the research evidence relating to comprehensive income for the reporting
requirements of AASB 101. Justify your decision, including any caveats you may have.
(Note: Full references for each of these articles can be found in the selected references list.)
