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The aim of the study is to review the extant literature on International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) adoption in emerging economies (EEs) and low-income countries (LICs) (“what do we know?”), and to propose an agenda for future research (“what do we need to know?”).

An analytical framework that builds on diffusion theory is developed. The authors follow the “PRISMA Flow Diagram” to reduce a total of 427 articles from four databases to a final sample of 41 articles. These studies are examined, aided by the analytical framework.

The authors find that IPSASs are a relevant issue for EEs/LICs. Overall, existing research is often explorative. The authors discover that the majority of articles rely on secondary data collection. While two-thirds of the studies perform a content analysis of pre-existing material, about one-fifth of the articles each collect primary data through means of interviews and questionnaires. The findings offer a holistic understanding of where and at what stages IPSAS reforms stand in EEs/LICs, and what factors influence the progression of reforms to the next stage of diffusion.

The authors outline a number of avenues for further research after discussing the dominating trends and structuring the literature based on our analytical framework. These stem from looking at the blank spots and an identified need to contextualise IPSASs adoption in EEs/LICs.

The purpose of this study is to explore the availability of information on law enforcement websites in the state of Wisconsin.

The study conducted a content analysis of all 179 county and municipal local law enforcement agency websites within Wisconsin. The authors then implemented a comparative analysis that explored whether the quantity and quality of information available on law enforcement websites are similar to those of local governments and school districts. The authors then estimated models to test whether there is a relationship between the population size served and gender distribution of law enforcement departments to the availability of information on law enforcement websites.

Law enforcement websites contain a noticeable lack of information. The finding is even more apparent when comparing law enforcement websites to the websites of local governments and school districts. Finally, the authors show a positive link between information sharing on law enforcement websites and the proportion of the civilian staff at an agency that are women.

Past studies that reviewed the make-up of law enforcement websites analyzed large law enforcement departments rather than local law enforcement departments, which notably represent the majority of most law enforcement departments. The authors also explicitly demonstrate that the commitment to information sharing is lagging within law enforcement websites compared to local-level governments. Future scholarship and law enforcement departments may benefit from exploring the employment of female civilians.

Research dealing with earnings management in the public-sector context is expanding. This paper aims to review the existing literature to understand how research is developing and points out gaps deserving further investigation.

This study uses the structured literature methodology to investigate the state-of-the-art and future directions of the literature on earnings management in the public sector. In total, 78 articles were explored.

The critical analysis of the literature shows that different but related streams of literature are emerging, focused on both a macro- and a micro-level perspective (mainly local governments and state-owned enterprises).

This study is the first that offers a comprehensive review of the literature on the emerging topic of earnings management in the public-sector context. The structured literature review enables the identification of future directions for the literature in this field.

This study investigates the transparency of budgets by examining its relationship with financial sustainability, which is a central area of research in the public-sector context.

Referring to the public value framework, a large sample of 110 countries has been investigated, implementing econometric models where the dependent variable is the Open Budget Index (OBI), published by the International Budget Partnership (IBP), and the test variables are different indicators of financial sustainability.

The results that emerge from the analysis suggest that budget transparency could be positively associated with the financial sustainability of governments, beyond the traditional aims of enhancing citizens' trust and participation.

This research offers important insights for policy areas, suggesting that improving budget transparency could be beneficial for public administrations because of the positive association with financial sustainability.

The objective of this study is to analyze the role that budgetary analytical capacity (BAC) plays for fiscal discipline in a sample of Eurozone countries in the postcrisis period.

Building on the policy capacity literature, an index for the BAC is constructed by including OECD budgetary data from three dimensions: reliability of projections, openness to legislative scrutiny and transparency. The proposed BAC index is validated by checking that larger values of the index are associated with the higher fiscal discipline scores across countries.

Controlling for the economic cycle, BAC index is positively associated with fiscal discipline. The association is stronger for the index as a whole than for the three separate dimensions.

The study is done on the limited sample of countries, and it is not feasible to validate results over time.

Budgetary policymakers can improve fiscal discipline by enhancing the three pillars that support the BAC.

Stronger BAC can help to improve the quality of public decision-making and overcome political opportunism.

This is the first study that introduces the concept of BAC, makes it operational and suggests its relevance for supporting fiscal discipline.

Acknowledging fiscal crises as critical junctures for policy makers, this paper investigates how the recent fiscal crisis has affected the paradigmatic approach to the design of an ongoing governmental accounting (GA) reform.

This paper analyses the Italian GA harmonization as a peculiar instance of an ongoing GA reform at the crisis outbreak. A longitudinal narrative analysis of official documents is complemented with semi-structured interviews with key policy makers and participant observations.

The fiscal crisis is found to play an indirect role in the Italian GA reform, which, promoting centralization of competencies in the fields of GA, determines the intensification of the approach adopted before the crisis outbreak.

This paper extends the knowledge on the nature of post-crisis reforms by highlighting how fiscal crises can work as catalysts for paradigmatic approaches to ongoing GA reforms. This paper analyses the designing of a GA reform, whereas the long-term adaptations and outcomes of the reform are not taken into consideration.

The tight link between GA and financial management issues featuring the current paradigmatic approaches to reforms suggests the need to design GA reforms consistently with fiscal and financial management policies.

Whereas the extant literature on the nature of post-crisis reforms analyses the latter as responses to the former, this paper enlarges the knowledge on the topic by focusing on a peculiar instance of a GA reform that was ongoing at the crisis outbreak.

The study investigates the influence of financial transparency on citizens' trust and revenue paying behaviour of citizens of local governments in sub-Saharan Africa. It relies on the theories of stewardship and public choice in explaining the relationship between financial transparency, trust and willingness to pay.

The study applied a Partial Least Square Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM) to survey data of 404 respondents selected from four Metropolitan and Municipal Assemblies of Ghana to test the hypotheses of the study.

It establishes the fact that financial transparency positively influences trust of citizens in local government and their willingness to pay taxes and levies. The study also found that both financial transparency and trust are low in the local governments of Ghana.

The study emphasises the importance of financial transparency in improving trust and willingness to pay. Thus, local governments are encouraged to seek innovative ways to enhance the quality and access to financial information by the citizens.

While prior studies focus on the measurement and determinant of financial transparency, this study links financial transparency to revenue mobilisation in the local government of sub-Saharan Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical evidence about the influence of the size of local government, the quality of local government financial statements, the level of local government response to the disclosure of financial information and the local political environment on the transparency of local government in Indonesia.

The study sample consisted of 34 regional governments (provinces) in Indonesia in 2016, using purposive sampling and multiple regression analysis.

The results showed that the quality of financial reporting through the audit opinion and political environment have a significant positive effect on the transparency of local government in Indonesia. On the other hand, the size of the local government and local government response rate on the regulation do not affect the transparency of local government in Indonesia.

The agency, legitimacy and institutional theory have an important role in the underlying local government transparency practices in Indonesia. The results of this study should be used as the basis of thought and study to determine the factors that affect the performance of local governments from the financial and non-financial aspects.

This paper aims to show the aligned development that took place in public administration and public financial management toward serving public values. By analyzing the mode of institutions’ interaction, the paper attempts to pinpoint the changing trends in budget institutions in Egypt, probing the extent to which they can be read from an administrative perspective and the possibility of enhancing budgetary outcomes under the existing administrative arrangements.

An analytical framework for public management administrative and budgetary institutions’ alignment is presented. A ladder analysis is developed to highlight the consistency of rationale between the two sets of institutions. The alignment is demonstrated at three consecutive levels: control and discipline, efficiency and effectiveness and openness and communication.

The international experience reveals that the alignment of administrative and budgetary institutions is both theoretically traceable and practically applicable in the case of developed economies. Whereas, in the case of Egypt, both sets of institutions have been exposed to best practices; yet, they are not seen as complementary and enforcing each other. The internalization of the benefits of reforms in the two tracks into an integrated public management context in the case of Egypt is not reached.

Egypt needs to ensure the alignment of both dimensions to maximize the benefits of reform.

The ladder approach sorts the developments in both administrative and budgetary institutions into three levels to help assessing the maturity and conformity in countries’ public management systems.