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This paper aims to detect anomalous data in income reports of Argentina, including personal income – from a sample of households – and statements of public officials.

A widely known technique in forensic accounting – such as Benford’s Law – is used. The Chi-square test and the absolute mean deviation are used for verification. The databases consulted include the income declared by households in the Permanent Household Survey – for the 2003-2017 period – and the capital declarations of high-ranking public officials – for the period 1999-2017.

The results suggest that income reported in the Encuesta Permanente de Hogares do not follow a Benford´s distribution, and the degree of conformity with this decreases significantly between 2007 and 2015 – coincident with the intervention period of the Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas y Censos. Patrimonial statements of public officials present an acceptable level of compliance with Benford’s law, especially among those of the legislative branch (in more than 90% of cases) although to a lesser extent among officials of the executive branch.

The results suggest that income reports from the Permanent Household Survey, for the period 2007-2015, should be used with reservations because of their possible manipulation.

During the intervention of the official statistics institute in Argentina (2007-2015), the idea of lack of credibility of its reports has been disseminated. To date, however, there is no empirical evidence to support it related to income.

Whenever we speak of patrimonialism, the reference is to the rule of the pater. Weber theorizes this connection from a genetic perspective. The prototype of patrimonial governance is the household. The patrimonial ruler manages his realm as he would manage his household according to rules of traditional wisdom. This genetic and naturalist model makes patriarchy a constitutive dimension of patrimonial practices. In this conception, patrimony implies the dominion of fathers. Patrimonial officials are bound to be male.³ At least this is what we think. And we are all the more inclined to think so if we assume that the rule of the fathers is a fact of nature grounded in a biological necessity. Etymology comforts this bias: the reference to gender, being inscribed in the term, lends credence to a substantialist interpretation.

The purpose of this paper is to locate the specific items from the financial statements that are responsible for the dirty surplus accounting flows and how important they are in its explanation.

It is generally accepted that some country accounting rules allow some operations that can generate dirty surplus in the annual statements. Working on this basis, it is necessary to consider information at the same time across firms and across time, using panel data econometric techniques. A static panel data estimated by generalized least squares can be used to correct correlations between firms and account numbers or a dynamic panel data estimated by GMM‐SYS with instrumental variables to avoid endogeneity.

Results show that in a static panel data model, the income statement items have a lower explicative power of balance sheet items variations, having higher explicative power a dynamic one (AR(1)). Results show that, specifically, financial assets, debts and book value capture the dirty accounting flows.

Working in differences reduces the explicative power of the income statement and working in levels could be inconsistent if it is impossible to contrast, first, stationary in data due to their shortage. It is suggested that future works increase the frequency of the observed data, and contrast the cointegration as a way to check the accounting relationships.

It is important to evaluate whether the income statement can (or cannot) explain the financial position of a firm. Also it is important to know where dirty surplus accounting flows are located can be useful for firms' valuation.

The econometric technique proposed in the paper deals with the main limitation in accounting research: information is bigger in cross‐section (number of firms) than in time series (economic periods).

The article aims to analyse the perception of the internal users regarding the usefulness of the municipal financial reporting in the context of decision making in the Portuguese local administration.

This research is quantitative and positive, based on a cross‐section analysis through the online application of a questionnaire to the decision makers (politicians and technicians) of the 308 Portuguese municipalities. The approach is based on the paradigm of information usefulness.

The results indicate a high usefulness for the decision making of the municipal financial reporting, in its current form and content. However, this usefulness would increase if information, other than what is mandatory, were introduced. In general, the two different groups of decision makers, politicians and technicians, behave somewhat differently, regarding the usefulness that the financial reporting holds for them. The technical decision makers consider it of greater value. There is no statistical evidence that shows that there is a link between the training area and professional experience of the internal decision makers and the usefulness of the municipal financial reporting. Both types of users show a preference for the information set within the budgetary accounts, although accrual‐based information also proves to be of excellent value.

The main limitations of this study are related to the way information was collected (questionnaire) to obtain empirical evidence. The questionnaire, sent by email, despite reaching a wide‐ranging and dispersed population, does not assess the truthfulness and integrity of the responses. Furthermore, it does not make it possible to really identify the usefulness of the municipal financial reporting. The use of perceptive measures can also represent a threat to the study's internal validity.

The results of this study have important repercussions on the internal decision makers concerning the usefulness of the municipal financial reporting. Particularly, since the general approach towards the usefulness of the reporting could become a solid work basis for the regulatory bodies to enhance the current reporting model in the light of its suitability within the internal decision making.

Research on this study is original as it provides, as far as the authors are aware, the first empirical evidence of the perceptions of internal users on the usefulness of the municipal financial reporting in Portugal, in regard to decision making.

Democratic renewal in Sri Lanka as well as a cross the Global South depends on strengthening democratic social movements within varieties of patrimonial capitalism. Patrimonial capitalism, emphasising patron–client relations, coincide with weakening democratic institutional cultures and practices. The dominant corruption/anti-corruption narrative is bracketed with elite class strategies aimed at negotiating a ‘managed corruption’. The realm of representative politics creating consent for patrimonial capitalism is shaped by: ethnic and class relations; the weakening of working-class parties; patriarchal cultures within parties; links with criminal networks; opaque finances and the integration of mainstream media with party patronage.

Democratising the realm of representative politics points towards democratic social movements. The internal dynamics of social movements, their relationships with political parties and collective learning are significant factors that shapes the strategic orientation of social movements. State repression of social movements highlights the need for demilitarisation and the abolition of prisons. The global sense of this local struggle relates to transforming financial markets and platform economies towards notions of financial and digital commons. The integration of different realms of politics, such as representative, movement, life and emancipatory politics, is vital for reinforcing solidarity as the basis for counter-hegemonic struggles.

In this paper, the authors aim to analyze the impact of International Financial Reporting Standards' (IFRS) mandatory adoption on the financial statements of Spanish listed companies.

The authors estimate a panel data model by generalized least squares' within-between in order to contrast the possible structural breaks in the relations between income statement items and balance sheet items, using data from the 35 largest listed companies.

The results show significant changes on these relations, but with different signs and degrees of intensity depending on the balance sheet item analyzed.

The data choice introduces a size bias that could be taken into account in the generalization of the results to other listed companies.

This work is developed using a mandatory, local, accounting and panel data framework for first time using Spanish listed companies in order to measure the impact of the IFRS adoption.

Analysts of modern-day sub-Saharan Africa have argued that its “neopatrimonial regimes,” descending from pre-colonial polities, translate badly to the scale of the nation-state and hinder democratic accountability. In this paper, I argue by contrast that the problem with today’s failed or failing states is that they are not patrimonial enough, if we understand patrimonialism in classic Weberian terms as a system based on traditions of reciprocal interdependence between rulers and citizens, and characterized by personal but malleable ruling networks. I make this argument by showing how the Asante Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries shifted from a working model, incorporating both patrimonial and bureaucratic forms of authority, to an exploitative one that reneged on its traditional commitments to the wider public. The cause of this shift was the expansion of exchange with European nations as a rival avenue to power and wealth. This problem continues today, where African rulers are incentivized by the demands of global banks, the United Nations, and G20 governments rather than internal authority traditions, thus limiting their ability to establish locally effective and publically accountable hybrids of patrimonial and bureaucratic governance.

Until the end of 1997, governmental accounting in Portugal was characterised as essentially cash-based budgetary accounting, using singleentry as the bookkeeping method. The only compulsory accounting system was Budgetary Accounting. As many countries all over the world, nowadays Portugal is implementing a reform of the whole governmental accounting, which has as most important innovations the use of double-entry within a system compulsorily integrating accrual-based Financial and Cost Accounting along with Budgetary Accounting (still essentially cash-based). The main purpose of this paper is to describe and analyse the reform and current situation of governmental accounting in Portugal, especially discussing the accrual basis implementation. In particular, it shows that not only governmental accounting reform in Portugal has been going towards international harmonization, but also problems that have arisen are common to others faced by several countries. Perspectives of future evolution are also presented.

The book focuses on the Netherlands as a distinctive case which, as the first hegemonic economic and political entity in Western Europe, sheds light on similar processes but different outcomes in France and England. The time periods considered are the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century when the Dutch established a position of world power through a global colonial system, and the decline of Dutch hegemony in the 18th century (although Adams is careful to point out that the timing of the decline is open to debate). The purpose of the book is at once historical and theoretical. It is to analyze Dutch ascendancy and decline in an effort to “build the foundation of a more adequate explanation of historical hegemonies, of varying patterns of state formation and collapse in early modern Europe (p. 12).” Accordingly, Adams treats the Netherlands in part as a “vehicle for tackling theoretical issues of the largest possible interest (p. 7).”

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between accounting and the early roots of the nation‐state in mid nineteenth‐century Siam/Thailand.

First, the paper examines the theoretical inter‐relationship between accounting and nationalism. Second, it relates this theoretical understanding to a study of the changing concepts, methods and structures of indigenous Siamese accounting at a time of transition when foreign mercantile influence was beginning to have an impact on the mid nineteenth^‐century Siamese economy. Third, the paper analyses how these accounting structures and practices came to constitute a socio‐political instrument, which contributed to the administrative development of a Siamese dynastic state by the mid nineteenth‐century. Finally, the paper studies the ways in which this dynastic state began to promote national characteristics through the use of its accounts to create a sense of Siamese cultural identity.

The findings emphasise the important role of accounting in the construction of political and national identity.

This inter‐disciplinary paper highlights a general neglect in the accounting literature of the instrumental role of accounting in nation‐state formation as well as offering a re‐interpretation of Thai historiography from an accounting viewpoint. Moreover as an example of alternative accounting practice, this paper provides an analysis of indigenous accounting methods and structures in mid nineteenth‐century Siam/Thailand at the point when they were becoming increasingly influenced by foreign mercantilism.