Search results

This paper aims to examine how proportional appropriation systems affect the quality of financial reporting in entities controlled by local governments.

The authors examine this issue using the setting of Italian municipally owned entities (MOEs) following the implementation of a new accounting regulation that limits the spending power of the participating municipality when the owned entity reports losses. The authors apply Benford's law on net income figures using the Chi-square and Z-tests on the adjusted version of the Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) criterion to spot any sign of low data quality. The sample, which consists of 2,120 MOEs, covers the years 2010–2019 and is evenly divided into the periods pre- and post-policy introduction.

Widespread data anomalies were detected following the introduction of the new regulation for MOEs controlled by local governments. Evidence is stronger for entities owned entirely by municipalities. The results suggest that the extent of data manipulation grows as the municipality's ownership stake increases, consistent with the hypothesis that a decrease in spending power through the appropriation of financial resources affects earnings management practices in municipally controlled entities.

This paper sheds light on government-based accounting policies by documenting evidence of somewhat inefficient responses by those responsible for the preparation of financial statements on behalf of municipally owned entities, and, accordingly, insights are provided to help review these policies so as to forestall even indirectly detrimental repercussions on public services.

This paper extends prior research in public-sector earnings management by being the first to test whether MOEs manipulate their earnings as a consequence of participating municipalities' reduced spending capability. Understanding factors influencing earnings management practices driven by governments, other than political incentives, is still an open issue.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the current literature on consumer acceptance of cultured meat and to investigate the main factors that might affect it.

Data were collected from a sample of 490 consumers in Italy, using a web-based survey. The empirical analysis follows an exploratory approach based on the training and checking of a random forest model.

An important finding of this study concerns the overall positive perception of cultured meat on the part of the interviewees in a country that is the fifth-largest meat producer at the European level. Age, environmental and ethical issues, and scepticism about new food technologies are the most important factors that guide consumer acceptance of cultured meat. The results suggest that in order to increase cultured meat acceptance it would be important to inform and educate consumers towards new food and new food production methods.

The sample analysed in this study is not representative of the whole national population, as it happens in most papers dealing with new food.

Although the conclusions of this exploratory study cannot be over-generalized, the results provide interesting insights on how to increase cultured meat acceptance in view of the possible development of a new market for cultured meat.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the main factors that may affect Italian consumers’ willingness to eat insects. Italy is a fairly special case among Western countries: in many Italian regions, there is old traditional food with insects.

Data come from a sample of 456 consumers living in four Italian regions. The empirical investigation involves several steps: modification of class distributions to obtain a balanced sample; model estimation using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator; model evaluation using out-of-sample classification performance measures; and estimation of the “effect” of each explanatory variable via average predictive comparisons. The uncertainty associated with the whole procedure is evaluated using the bootstrap.

The interviewed consumers are generally unwilling to eat insect-based food. However, factors such as previous experience, taste expectations and attitude towards both new food experiences and sustainable food play an important role in shaping individual inclination towards eating insects.

The sample analysed in this study is not representative of the whole national population, as it happens in most papers dealing with entomophagy.

The paper revisits the issue using a relatively large sample and sophisticated statistical methods. The likely average effect of each explanatory variable is estimated and discussed in detail. The results provide interesting insights on how to approach a hypothetical Italian consumer in view of the possible development of a new market for edible insects.

This paper aims to contribute to the debate over the desirability of introducing an accrual-based accounting system in the public sector by examining whether accrual-based accounting information is superior to cash-based information in the context of public sector entities.

This paper applies a quantitative research method to assess the degree of smoothness and relevance of the accrual components of income recorded by 302 entities of the Italian National Health Service (INHS) over the period 2014–2020.

The analysis reveals that net income is smoother than cash flows as a summary measure of economic results and that accounting for accruals improves the predictability of future cash flows. However, the authors' novel disaggregation of accrual accounts reveals that those accounts that contribute the most to making income smoother than cash flows – noncurrent assets and liabilities – are also those that contribute the least to predicting future cash flows.

The disaggregation of accrual accounts allows to identify the sources of the informational benefits of accrual accounting, and to document the existence of an informational “trade-off” between smoothness and relevance in the context of public sector entities.