Purpose – Opposition to transnational calls for the adoption of accrual-based accounting in the public sector may stem from arguments that it is associated with poor earnings quality. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether state owned enterprises (SOEs) operating under accrual-based...

The paper describes the process that took Australian Local Councils to a business-like accounting and highlights the role played in it by the accounting profession. Taken over by the Government in the standard setting process for the private sector, the Australian accounting profession set up...

Italian Corte dei Conti is required to audit financial statements of Local Governments (Regioni) and to produce a report known as "referto." In order to perform such an audit, auditing standards developed in private experience (ISAs) might be of great help. Nonetheless, they do need to be...

In the last decade, Italian local Governments have made a massive use of limited companies to produce and to distribute public services, such as transportations, water maintainance, IT and the like. The public nature of the goals they are required to achieve and the public nature of the funds...

The last decade is replete with example of State Owned Corporations that, even if lacking any ability to continue as a going concern have obtained wide credit by both suppliers and banks. The habit of last year was that at the end of the day the public administration owning the company was...

Italian State-Owned Companies often present a public-style accountability, nonetheless, in most cases, they just have to comply with private sector reporting requirements. This significantly impairs the effectiveness of their reporting system and limits the control ability of the relevant public...

A recent research of the Italian Corte dei Conti has shown as most local government owned companies are not a going concern on their own. They are often unable to reach the economic break even and their continuity depends on shareholders' ability to periodically pay in new fresh capital. But...

Tangible Capital Assets, even if often explaining the largest part of the resources managed by public sector reporting entities, stay outside the scope of the cash based reporting system that has long prevailed and still prevails in that sector. Therefore, when those entities have started to...