Setting consolidated reporting standards for local government

Abstract

Under a corporatization trend, traditional financial reporting is generally considered unable to offer a complete view of the economic and financial activities of a group of public entities. Consequently, several reforms and standards have been introduced related to consolidated financial reports. Through interviews with key actors, the authors analysed the normativity process for issuing consolidated reporting standards for local governments in three European countries: Italy, Spain, and Sweden.

Keywords:

• Accrual accounting
• consolidated financial reporting (CFR)
• local government
• normativity

Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to Torbjøn Tagesson and the other participants at the CIGAR workshop on ‘Whole-of-Government Accounts: International Trends’ held at Kristianstad University, Sweden (8–9 September 2014). We are also grateful to Christina Wigger and other participants at the EGPA workshop of the Permanent Study Group on Public Financial Management held in Modena, Italy (5-6 May 2016) for their valuable comments on previous versions of this paper.

This work was financed by FEDER—Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional funds through the COMPETE 2020—Operacional Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation (POCI), and by Portuguese funds through FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia in the framework of the project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016908 (PTDC/IIM- GES/6923/2014.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Isabel Brusca

Isabel Brusca is Professor in Accounting and Finance at the University of Zaragoza, Spain.

Giuseppe Grossi

Giuseppe Grossi is Professor of Accounting, Nord University Business School, Norway.

Francesca Manes-Rossi

Francesca Manes- Rossi is Associate Professor in Accounting at the University of Salerno, Italy.