Budget transparency and governance quality: a cross-country analysis

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to assess whether there is a relationship between budget transparency and governance quality. The so-called openness movement and the global financial crises, which have put significant pressure on governments to cut expenditures and ensure balanced budgets, have motivated this research. The public choice and principal-agent theories have been used to investigate this relationship, implementing econometric models based on a sample of 96 countries over the period 2008–2019. The results show that higher levels of budget transparency positively affect the quality of governance, and vice versa, documenting simultaneous causality between both issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Governance
• open budget
• budget transparency
• accountability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This study does not intend to depict an archetype (in the Weberian sense) of the concept of governance; it aims to implement a more concrete approach where different elements can coexist, as Osborne (2006) contends.

2. www.internationalbudget.org.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marco Bisogno

Marco Bisogno is Associate Professor in Accounting at the University of Salerno (Italy). He earned his PhD at the Naples University ‘Federico II’ in Business Administration. His current research projects are on public management, public-sector reforms, and accounting standards of public sector entities. He is a co-coordinator of the Task force IRSPM A&A SIG, CIGAR Network, EGPA PSG XII.

Beatriz Cuadrado-Ballesteros

Beatriz Cuadrado-Ballesteros is Associate Professor in Accounting at the University of Salamanca (Spain), where she earned her PhD in Business Economics. She was visiting researcher in the Edinburgh University Business School (UK) and the University of Salerno (Italy). Her research interests are public administration, public management and public-sector reforms.