مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد همگرایی آمارهای مالی دولتی و حسابداری – الزویر 2018

The main aim of this paper is to study the convergence between micro and macro systems of government accounting information, looking to contribute to the analysis of accounting harmonization process in the EU, as a tool to improve the comparability of financial, budgetary, and aggregated statistical reports, in order to improve social, political and economic decision-making and accountability. All this is obviously located in the current context of the EU, with a high degree of harmonization of accounting standards between the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS), and those applied for the preparation of national accounts, ruled by European System of National and Regional Accounts (ESA 2010). We have carried out different analytical methodologies to study the convergence of public accounting systems in the EU for 2014 and 2015, considering that the new European System of National Accounts came in force since September 2014. First, for each country, we calculate a global index and partial indexes for central and local governments. Secondly, we apply an alternative model based on the distance between the adjustments of each country and the extreme situation, that would imply null adjustments. As a supplementary, we focus on the relative weight of adjustments by country and for each level of government. The study concludes, among other findings, that the importance of adjustments differs between countries and areas of government. Adjustments connected to recognition criteria (accrual or others), particularly significant from the point of view of the approach to GAAP, rank first in importance at the central government level, but are less significant at the local level.

Introduction

The analysis of the convergence of public accounting systems in the EU is a dynamic research that needs to be updated depending on statistical, methodological and regulatory changes that are occurring in the EU. Therefore, we consider that the introduction of the new ESA 2010 requires a review of the state of convergence of accounting systems. The main justification of this study comes from a continuous research work on this field, in order to have a “permanent picture” of the process of convergence between systems, focused on the transition to accrual criteria. After a review ofthe main differences between macro and micro governmental accounting systems inthe EU countries, we willfocus this paper on themethodological analysis ofthe differences listed in Excessive Deficit Procedure (EDP) Notification Tables developed by the Statistical Office of the European Union (EUROSTAT), studying the differences between the budgetary accounting and Government Financial Statistics (GFS) in different EU MSs at central and local governments. Specifically, this study attempts to answer the following research questions: (a) What are the most relevant features of the adjustments for differences between national accounts and budgetary accounts of each country in determining the deficit with the new methodology at the two government levels? (b) What is the global convergence between both accounting information systems at central and local government? (c) Whatis the partial convergence showed by the differences associated with classification of transactions, recognition criteria, delimitation of the sectors or other differences between both accounting information systems at central and local government? The research is focused on accrual criteria and analyses both, central and local government levels.