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This study provides a history and an inventory and analysis of existing public sector accounting principles in India from the time of independence from the British in 1947 through the economic reforms of the nineties. It also analyses the factors that are affecting the current evolution in governmental accounting from an ineffective bureaucratic system to an informative decision making tool, utilizing Luder’s Contingency Model of Public Sector Accounting.

Earnings forecasts provide useful numerical information concerning the expectations of a firm's future prospects and indicate management's ability to anticipate a firm's changing internal structure and external environment. The reasons for studying the accuracy of earnings forecasts is due to the Securities and Exchange Commission's position on financial forecasts and the issuance of a Statement of Position by the AICPA. These statements are important since they, in part, have motivated researchers to the importance of forecasting financial information. Consequently, if the disclosure of earnings forecasts in financial reports is permissable, the improvement of financial forecasts should be one of the primary concerns of the AICPA, the SEC, and numerous other interested groups.

This paper analyzes the impact of economic downturns on the revenue and expense sides of city financing for the period 2003 to 2009 using a convenience sample of the audited end of year financial reports for thirty midsized US cities. The analysis focuses on whether and how quickly and how extensively revenue and spending directions from past years are altered by recessions. A seven year series of Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) data serves to explore whether citiesʼ revenues and spending, especially the traditional property tax and core functions such as public safety and infrastructure withstood the brief 2001 and the persistent 2007 recessions? The findings point to consumption (spending) over stability (revenue minus expense) for the recession of 2007, particularly in 2008 and 2009.

This study examines whether nonprofit hospitals (NPHs) use price increases to overstate reported charity care spending. Anecdotal evidence points to hospitals raising prices to maximize Medicare's supplemental reimbursement and to maximize collection from self-pay and uninsured patients. This study provides empirical evidence that NPHs raise prices in part to satisfy the state's charity care requirements and to substitute real care with price-valued charity care. The ratio of charges to costs (RCC), price standardized by cost - a measure for comparing revenues generated to estimate costs allocations, is used to test the association between price increases and charity care reporting by NPHs. We hypothesize and find evidence that NPHs facing financial and political pressures in addition to charity care regulations are more likely to report a higher value of charity care.

We examine the factors that associate with local government decisions to comply with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). GAAP non-compliance is surprisingly common among larger local governments, and that trend has important implications for public policy, financial management transparency, and government accountability. To examine the factors that drive GAAP compliance, we develop a conceptual framework based on the politico-economic perspective on accounting policy choice, and then test that model with data from a national survey of local government finance professionals. Our key contribution is that we incorporate accounting professionalism. The findings suggest that for many local governments the decision to adopt GAAP is a response to the pressures of professionalism rather than a rational response to political and economic motives.