A Study on the Usefulness of Price - Level Change Accounting Information

물가변동회계정보의 유용성에 관한 고찰

The author has intended to seek for the usefulness of price-level change accounting information through financial statements of general price level. The accounting information obtained from financial statements of general price level, must be useful to the reasonable judgment of financial statement users or to the economic decision making, This thesis may be summarized as follows : 1. Financial statements arranged by historical cost accompany many problems as accounting information. In other words, at the time of inflation, they have little usefulness as accounting information. 2. In order to correct the little usefulness of the financial statements arranged by historical cost, the author examined this matter centering around FASB statement No. 33. 3. The price level change accounting eliminates the contradiction of the accounting information obtained from the financial statements arranged by historical cost. 4. In the general price level change accounting, money value is presumed to change according to the level of general price and, then, the money value for goods must be revised. 5. In the general price level change accounting, the division between monetary items of asset and debt, and non-monetary items, is important. 6. The general price level change accounting based upon historical cost accounting, has objectivity as accounting information like the cost basis accounting and larger usefulness than the cost basis accounting. In conclusion, the price level change accounting increases its usefulness as accounting information and, therefore. (1) the information on the general price level change accounting is desirable to be disclosed as supplementary information for the traditional financial statements, and (2) the general price level change accounting should be induced to the listed Companies in Korea under continuing inflation for improving the usefulness of financial statements as accounting information.