The publication of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs) in the field of governmental financial reporting has raised the necessity for a wide-ranging discussion about the harmonization of public sector accounting systems. The article has a double aim: to show the adoption or not of IPSASs in local and central government and to analyse the level of convergence between the different countries studied. In order to achieve these objectives, we carried out an empirical study, whose results allow us to show that while some accounting systems are very close to the IPSASs model, others are completely different. Nevertheless, we think that this could be a starting point and that in the near future countries could tend towards IPSASs more and more, which may be the most probable way to reach convergence accounting systems between them.

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The International Public Sector Accounting Standards have been seen as a path towards the modernization of governmental accounting, and many countries have made efforts to adopt them. The purpose of this article is to analyse the stimuli and barriers to the adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards, as well as their main benefits, using a structural equation model. The research methodology is based on a questionnaire sent to American and European Union countries that has been used to construct a structural model, and our results show that comparability and modernization are direct benefits of International Public Sector Accounting Standards implementation, and that both adopter and non-adopter countries value these positive impacts. This justifies the process of harmonization that the European Commission recently started. Points for practitioners The analysis of the impact of International Public Sector Accounting Standards in the international context shows to what extent the adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards are useful for modernizing governmental accounting and achieving accounting comparability. Describing the experience of countries that have adopted International Public Sector Accounting Standards can help practitioners and professionals who participate in modernizing accounting systems, such as the European Union. Many countries are now moving towards International Public Sector Accounting Standards and the experiences of pioneer countries can serve as a learning process. This article shows that introducing International Public Sector Accounting Standards can have many advantages in practice and that countries that have implemented these standards consider that they allow an increase in transparency and accountability.

A broad debate about the harmonization of public sector accounting standards in Europe is underway. The authors provide arguments in favour of harmonization, but they also acknowledge the existing pluralism and diversity by taking stock of the state of play in 14 European countries. The paper makes a proposal for a way forward for policy-makers and standard-setters, in which the benefits of harmonization can be obtained without obliging EU member countries to necessarily abandon their current public sector accounting systems

Summary During the last 30 years, many public administration reforms promoted by New Public Management have been undertaken. These reforms have spread to Latin‐American countries and include changes in governmental accounting systems, where the implementation of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs) has been a stimulus for modernization. This article aims to clarify the situation of IPSASs implementation in the Latin‐American context as well as the stimuli for and effects of their implementation. The analysis shows that there is an emerging international trend to adopt IPSASs in Latin‐American countries although at the same time, there are evident obstacles to achieving reform goals. In Colombia, reforms are still underway, and the usefulness of IPSASs to improve decision‐making at an organisational level cannot be evaluated. Meanwhile, in Peru, the modernization is more rhetorical than real, and many efforts remain to be made for the effective implementation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The present research aims to analyse and compare how austerity has influenced online sustainability information in Italy and Spain. Design: We relate austerity policies to online information in order to ascertain whether austerity plays a role in the financial, organizational, social and environmental information disclosed on local government websites. The research has been conducted by analysing the websites of all Italian and Spanish local governments with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Findings: The results show that institutional and legislative pressures, as well as austerity measures, have played a relevant role in the increased production of information by local governments, although not all information is fully provided. Originality/value: The results may be of interest to managers and politicians as a stimulus to increase the flow of information. They may also be useful to policy makers, regulators and other stakeholders in order to foment environmental information.

In recent years efforts to modernise and regulate public accounting systems have been carried out in most countries, driven essentially by the interest in establishing a Public Accounting capable of satisfying the required needs for attaining efficient management of public resources, as well as for demonstrating accountability to stakeholders. In this paper we aim to analyse the degree of local government accounting harmonisation, demonstrating in a general way that their accounting systems show very little homogenisation, accounting diversity being, in fact, one of their principal characteristics. In this context, we refer to the benefits and problems involved in reducing the differences between accounting systems and in increasing the comparability of financial reporting.

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