Search results

The ability of investors, taxpayers and researchers to compare financial statements issued by hospitals, universities and other governmental agencies is affected by their understanding of current accounting and reporting rules. Publicly owned not-for-profit organizations report different financial results from those that are privately owned. This study looks at the historical events that brought about the accounting and reporting divergences, discusses the recognition and reporting differences, and explores the implications for statement users.

Financial reporting is the cornerstone of financial management. In 1999, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) ratified unanimously GASB Statement No. 34. In this paper, using the Georgia Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) and interviews with practitioners, we examine the implication of GASB 34 for the linkage between reporting and accountability. The research findings show that Statement 34 introduces significant impacts on reporting. However, its implications for accountability and better financial management are yet to be as significant as hoped.

We examine the relevance of governmental accounting information to the citizenry by analyzing the association between various financial and non-financial measures of local government performance and residential property values. The link between government performance measures and residential property values is based on a model of housing value capitalization developed by Yinger (1982). Using a model of firstdifferences, we find that changes in housing values are associated with government financial measures, including reported surplus and changes in outstanding debt. Further, we find that changes in housing values are also associated with non-financial measures of performance by county schools. Overall our results suggest that both financial and non-financial government performance measures are economically relevant to citizen property owners.

In 2004, City of Gardena was unable to meet its obligations on $26 million in debt. The authors examined City of Gardena financial reporting as of June 30, 2004 and 2003 to determine if the publicly available financial reports adequately disclosed the situation. Information about the long-term debt was properly displayed in the financial statements and disclosed in notes. There was no mention of the situation in the MD&A either year. The auditors’ did not include an explanatory paragraph highlighting the debt, nor did they issue a ‘substantial doubt about the ability to continue to exist as a going concern’ report. This paper examines existing accounting and auditing standards to determine their adequacy to protect the public interest.

Taking into consideration the lively debate about recognition, measurement, and disclosure criteria for heritage assets (HA) in financial reporting, the purpose of this paper is to examine the comment letters submitted by governmental organizations regarding the consultation paper (CP) on HA in order to understand what is the position of the governmental organizations in relation to critical issues of the accounting and financial reporting of HA.

From a methodological point of view, a content analysis was performed. First, the responses were classified according to level of agreement with the 13 items included in the CP on HA; second, the arguments adduced by respondents in supporting or contradicting the proposed approaches and definitions have been investigated.

The majority of responses came from countries with relevant differences in culture, administrative traditions and accounting systems. Governmental organizations strongly agreed with the recognition of heritage items as “assets” in financial reporting, while conflicting positions on measuring bases were identified.

This study is one of the few studies based on the content of the comment letters received in response to the CP on HA. The present study can also give an idea of the content of the future IPSAS on HA. Moreover, it is the first study attempting to enrich the debate on governmental organizations’ participation to the IPSAS standard-setting process.

The purpose of this paper is to approach, both theoretically and empirically, public sector reporting at European Union (EU) level. It contributes to the accounting harmonisation literature by revealing the actual status of governmental reporting at the national level.

The paper carried out an exploratory data analysis of the harmonisation of statistical, budgetary and financial reporting at the EU level. A mapping visualisation offers a comprehensive overview of the current state of connections between these reporting systems.

The results reveal the complexity of governments’ reporting systems homogeneity, although all stakeholders recognise the struggle for the principles of performance and transparency in the public sector. Thus, these are following the EU Commission’s study, which concludes that there is significant heterogeneity in the accounting and reporting practices applied transversely throughout all Member States.

The relevance of the study is comprehensive, from the economic environment to the practitioners, from the international regulatory bodies to the national ones, all can assess and quantify the significance of the past, present and future changes, considering their needs. The limitations of the research regard the documentation background because uniformly accessing some information presented by the EU Member States is relatively tricky. Future research might focus on the effects of these changes as they occur.

The study contributes to the scientific literature in the public sector through a comprehensive, well-supported and statistically grounded analysis performed at EU level, able to provide reliable results and to support valuable future recommendations towards harmonised reporting. Moreover, it supports and encourages all national and international efforts for improving the comparability of financial, budgetary and aggregated statistical reports.

The purpose of this paper is to debate the future form of reporting in the public sector by examining alternative forms of reporting, and more specifically the frameworks of integrated reporting and popular reporting. Moreover, the paper explores whether and how these reports could be related to each other in order for the needs of a pillar user group, that of the citizens, to be addressed.

The authors analyze the frameworks of integrated reporting and popular reporting, and by combining their characteristics the authors propose a creative synthesis suitable for the public sector.

The analysis leads to the conclusion that governmental entities need to take the next step on reporting in two parallel levels: the first would require the publication of information encountered in integrated reports containing various information elements that are not confronted to the traditional financial ones. The second would result in the provision of this information in a concise and easily comprehensive way. The merger of these two streams will give rise to the publication of “Integrated Popular Reports – IPR.”

This move would result to useful and meaningful reporting with potential strategic advantages. The integrated reporting dimension of the reports combined to the popular reporting dimension would provide an adequate information matrix for citizens and other user groups (e.g. politicians, public executives), that are interested to understand the “whole picture” of public sector entities but at the same time they neither possess advanced accounting knowledge nor they are familiar with technical terminology.

This paper reports results of a survey that examines user perceptions of alternate formats of the Statement of Cash Flows (SCF) mandated by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). The formats were compared using seven reporting issues. The findings indicate that users found the GASB SCF model to be superior to the FASB model for all issues. The study has implications for both standard-setting bodies. The GASB has already considered the results in developing a new reporting model for governmental entities. The FASB may at some point want to reconsider its SCF reporting requirements.

A financial statement analysis case uses the government-wide financial statements of Corona, CA to teach students about the financial overview provided in the new governmental financial reporting model. Educators are struggling to incorporate the new model in their governmental accounting curricula. The case analysis is beneficial to students in three ways. First, the active, case learning approach of using a real world example complements existing pedagogical materials for better mastery of the new reporting model. Second, the case approach of using ambiguity and alternative solutions promotes the development of analytical skills. Third, the written requirement and class discussion promotes the development of communication skills.