Playing for keeps: local government distortion of depreciation accruals in response to high-stakes public policy-making

Use of discretionary accounting accruals has long been recognized as a vehicle for earnings management in the private sector. More recently, evidence has emerged suggesting that public officials may similarly manipulate discretionary accruals in order to achieve ‘balanced’ operating results. This paper extends the previous literature on the manipulation of depreciation accruals to the realm of high-stakes public policy-making.     

Measuring Compliance with the Golden Rule

The golden rule of public finance is based upon the notin that intergenerational equity requires that the cost of public expenditures be spread over time in a manner that reflects the intertemporal distribution of the benefits generated by those expenditures. This is often translated into a rule that the budget be structurally balanced in accrual accounting terms. This article considers the form of accrual accounting that is most suited to the task of measuring the consistency of fiscal policy with the golden rule. It recommends a combination of the real capital maintenance approach (also known as ‘current purchasing power accounting’) and annuity depreciation. Such an approach differs from ‘current cost accounting’, which has dominated public sector models of accrual accounting in recent years. The meaning of balance-sheet measures is also considered, and it is concluded that the golden rule is more appropriately expressed as an accrual balanced budget requirement than as a requirement for the maintenance of constant net worth. JEL classification: H6, M40.     

A consumer‐oriented culture?

Public sector managers are asked to ‘stay close to the customer’ and to develop a consumer‐oriented culture. While important lessons from the private sector ‐ if properly translated—can be applied to the public sector, this does not mean that existing skills need to be abandoned, rather supplemented.     

Attracting private sector participation in infrastructure investment: the UK case

This article examines the potential for private sector organizations to contribute to public sector innovation. Specifically, the study explores how partnering with the private sector can go beyond delivery and extend to development of new services and new markets. The term ‘commercialization partnership’ is coined for such partnerships and the article describes an exploratory investigation of this emerging form of innovation.     

Effect of outsourcing public sector audits on cost‐efficiency

This study compares the cost‐efficiency of ‘in‐house’ and outsourced to private sector audit supplier arrangements to deliver financial audits in the public sector by examining audit cost‐efficiency within the context of the public sector arrangement at one state in Australia (Western Australia). The results for 178 public agencies show that outsourced audits are, in general, more costly than in‐house audits, but this result is conditional on the type and size of public agency. Specifically, outsourced audits are more costly than in‐house audits for small statutory authority audits, whereas for specialist audits (i.e. hospitals) and large and complex statutory authority audits, the in‐house supply is equally efficient as the outsourced service.     

Does the economy matter? Tough times,good times,and public service motivation

This paper describes a pilot study which explored the effects of different economic conditions on the public service motivation (PSM) levels of a small group of government and private sector employees in Malaysia. It address three questions: are the PSM levels of government employees significantly higher than those of private sector employees; are the PSM levels of employees significantly influenced by their perceptions of the external economic environment; and is the relationship between the economy and PSM affected by the sector of employment? Government employees’ PSM levels were found to be higher than those of the private sector employees, and were sensitive to perceptions of different economic conditions.     

What role for social scientists in risk expertise?

When it comes to risks – health and environmental risks, like those linked to the use of nanotechnologies, pesticides, etc. – three main groups of actors are easily identified, brought together through boundary organisations such as environmental and sanitary risk agencies: the natural and technical scientists, who provide their expertise to assess risks (especially toxicologists, epidemiologists and microbiologists); the policy makers, who take decisions regarding risk management and risk regulation; the lay public, who are more and more involved in participatory frameworks. Sometimes three other groups of actors are added: the ‘economists’ who can for instance conduct cost–benefit assessments or multi-criteria analyses (especially ecological economists, public economists, political economists and social economists); the ‘philosophers’/‘ethicists’ who can use ethics to highlight moral choices and responsibilities in face of risks; and the ‘jurists’/‘legal experts’ who can justify authorisation or interdiction according to law. Inversely, there is a group of actors which is not clearly identified, that of social scientists, even though a considerable quantity of social science knowledge on risk has been produced. Why is there such a discrepancy? This article, based on a critical review of the literature, aims to make sense of the fuzziness surrounding the involvement of social scientists when it comes to risk expertise. The article shows that one reason for this puzzling situation is to be found in the gap between what social scientists often want to do when they are called in as risk experts and what natural scientists and public policy makers actually expect from them.     

The Implementation and Use of Benchmarking in Local Government: A Case Study of the Translation of a Management Accounting Innovation

Benchmarking is a management accounting innovation (MAI) that can be used for performance measurement and management in both the private and the public sectors. Although public sector accounting researchers have reported some success with the use of benchmarking, frequently charged problems exist in implementing and using this management technique. To look beyond the technical and institutional explanations, this paper takes a translation approach and presents a case study of a local government benchmarking network. We conclude that there is a link between benchmarking implementation problems and initiators’ failure to build a strong network of benchmarking allies. Implementation is facilitated if actors, other than the initiators, recognize the possibility of making benchmarking more relevant and less cost focused. However, even when a network of actors has a favourable attitude towards benchmarking, benchmarking may still appear as an unruly ‘actant’. Furthermore, the perception of implementation failure and success is heterogeneous and connected to various actors’ adoption of benchmarking. We also conclude that there is a connection between the use of benchmarking and 1) actors’ possibilities to use benchmarking in the struggle for resources and 2) the perception of benchmarking information as ‘factual’ or ‘factual enough’. However, the perception of benchmarking information as ‘factual’ or ‘factual enough’ seems not only a matter of correct or incorrect ratios but also of whether such information serves actors’ interests. A final conclusion is that the use of benchmarking increases when actors other than the initiators complement the original idea and ‘counter interest’ the initiators.     

THE RELATIVE EFFICIENCY OF PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Aside from revenue mobilization, one of the arguments for allowingthe private sector to assume a larger role in the provisionof education is that it would increase efficiency, as administratorsbecome more responsive to the needs of students and their parents.But what is the evidence? Based on case studies that compareprivate and public secondary education in Colombia, the DominicanRepublic, the Philippines, Tanzania, and Thailand, private schoolstudents generally outperform public school students on standardizedmath and language tests. This finding holds even after holdingconstant for the fact that, on average, private school studentsin these countries come from more advantaged backgrounds thantheir public. school counterparts. In addition, preliminaryevidence shows that the unit costs of private schools are lowerthan those of public schools. Although these results cannot,in themselves, be used as arguments for massive privatization,they indicate that governments should reconsider policies thatrestrain private sector participation in education. Furtherresearch is needed to determine whether some teaching and administrativepractices in private schools are applicable to public schools.      

External Audit Fee Levels in NHS Trusts

This article discusses the external auditing regime of NHS trusts and analyses the fees charged by their auditors. It adapts approaches developed in the private sector to investigate audit fees paid by NHS trusts and finds that, while similar factors are associated with the audit fees of trusts, there is no evidence of a 'Big 6' premium and trust audit fees are significantly lower than those of similar private sector organizations. Explanations for this are sought in the different natures of public and private sector audits, which indicate that differences in fees might be anticipated in the public sector, especially with the presence of a quasi-regulator in the form of the Audit Commission.     

An Investor Perspective on the Black Box of Corporate Social Responsibility

In summarizing the findings of their recent study, the authors report findings that suggest that not all socially responsible corporate policies are likely to have the same effect on a company's ownership and value. Using environmental policy as their proxy for CSR activities, the authors classify corporate environmental practices into two categories: (1) actions that reduce the likelihood of harmful outcomes by reducing the corporate exposure to environmental risk; and (2) actions that enhance companies' perceived ‘greenness’ through investments that go beyond both legal requirements and any conceivable risk management rationale. Although both groups of environmental practices are likely to be viewed as socially beneficial, corporate expenditures that reduce a firm's environmental risk exposure are more likely to benefit shareholders by limiting the risk of losses arising from environmental accidents, lawsuits, and fines—and possibly thereby reducing the firm's cost of capital. By contrast, corporate expenditures that enhance the firm's perceived greenness by going beyond legal requirements and risk management rationales could actually reduce shareholder value. Consistent with this hypothesis, the authors find that institutional investors tend to own smaller than average percentages of both companies the authors identify as ‘toxic’ and make limited efforts to manage their environmental risk, and companies they label ‘green’ with low environmental risk exposure but relatively high CSR spending on the environment. At the same time, such investors hold larger‐than‐average positions in ‘neutral’ companies with relatively low, or effectively managed, environmental risk exposures and limited investment in ‘greenness’ programs. The authors also find that both toxic and green companies have lower (Tobin's Q) valuations than neutral companies, and that otherwise toxic companies that effectively manage their environmental risk exposures have higher valuations.     

Scenario projects in Japanese government: Strategic approaches for overcoming psychological and institutional barriers

Scenario planning in the public sector has significant differences from scenario planning in the corporate world. Scenario planning in the government not only tends to be focused on issues of higher complexity and significance to public policy, but also in comparison to people in the private business, public officials have fundamental psychological and institutional constraints in their scenario thinking. These constraints make it difficult for them to contemplate multiple ‘untidy’ futures and imagine the possibility of policy failure: skills which are essential for successful scenario projects. Based on specific characteristics of scenario planning in the Japanese government, this paper contributes on better understanding the challenges and strategic solutions in providing more successful scenario planning in the public sector. Specifically, this paper argues that possible solutions in overcoming these constraints may be to shake public bureaucrats out of their thinking by providing free and open venues of conversation and more importantly through ‘derailment’ exercises.     

The Market for External Audit Services in the Public Sector: An Empirical Analysis of NHS Trusts

This study investigates the market for audit services in the UK National Health Service (NHS). The market has a number of interesting features, including the presence of the Audit Commission as a regulator, appointer and provider of audit services. Following a theoretical overview of audit pricing in the NHS, evidence is provided on the behaviour of private sector auditors in an environment where audit risk characteristics differ from the private sector. The research also investigates, for the first time in the public sector, the relationship between audit fees and non–audit (consultancy) fees. Comparisons are also drawn between audit fees in the public and private sectors in an analysis of audit fees by industry. Despite some key similarities, the study shows that a number of differences exist between private and public sector audit fee models. In particular, we find no evidence of Big 6 (or mid–tier) auditor premiums, but we do find a significant negative relationship between audit and consultancy fees providing support for the 'knowledge spill–over' hypothesis. In addition, the fees charged to trusts appear significantly lower than their private sector counterparts, despite trust auditors having additional duties to perform. Possible explanations for this finding are offered in the paper.     

Time Discounting and of the Cost of Capital in Government

The literature on public sector discounting has brought important insights, but there remain wide differences on some fundamental issues. This paper reviews the main conflicts and the reasons underlying them. It suggests practical procedures for discounting in government which are consistent with most of the literature but not with the ‘efficient market’ thesis that financial markets provide all the information needed to define these procedures.     

The determinants of audit fees—evidence from the voluntary sector

Given the growing demand for accountability in the public sector, there is a need to begin to investigate audit pricing issues in this sector. This study makes three contributions. First, it develops and estimates, for the first time, a model of audit fee determinants for the charity sector. As in previous private sector company studies, size, organisational complexity and audit firm location are the major determinants. A positive association between audit fees and fees for non-audit services is also observed. Charity sector factors of empirical significance include the nature of the charity (i.e., grant-making or fund-raising), its area of activity and the importance of trading income. Separate models for grant-making and fund-raising charities reflect the relative complexity of the audit of fund-raising charities. Second, the lower auditor concentration in the charity sector market, compared to the private sector market, permits a more powerful test of whether large firms and/or auditor expertise are rewarded with a fee premium. In the more complex audit environment of fund-raising charities, the results show that Big Six audit firms receive higher audit fees (18.5%, on average) than non-Big Six firms. Also, non-Big Six audit firms with charity expertise are rewarded with a fee premium over other non-Big Six firms. Finally, the study demonstrates that the charity audit fee rate is significantly lower than that of private sector companies; in fact it is approximately half. A change in the reporting of charity audit fees is proposed to reflect any element of ‘charitable giving’ by the audit firm.     

The public sector and health care

This paper specifies a model of the determinans of total expenditure on health care. The model shows how this expenditure is divided between the public and private sectors when public expenditures are chosen by majority rule.From the theoretical model I derive two equations determining the private and public expenditures on health care as shares of GDP. The equations are estimated using OECD panel data with two-way fixed effects and with simultaneous correction for heteroeskedasticity and serial correlation. The results include estimates of the price and income elasticities of public and private demands for health care as well as estimates of the crowdingout effects of public on private expenditures.Paper presented at the 51st Congress of the International Institute of Public Finance.     

Transforming social sector auditing – they audited more,but scrutinized less

The legitimacy of audit technologies is inevitably linked to a knowledge base. Even though it has been pointed out that the agreements on how to measure and verify certain operations are only temporal, empirical studies on change in audit are rare. This paper reports a detailed empirical study of change in performance audit within social services in Sweden. The paper complements previous research since this paper is not about making new things auditable but about challenging existing technologies within a field. We observe how the new ‘sharp’ control‐based model – realized through measures of prioritizing, focusing and standardizing – was related to new demands on ‘facts’ about the audit object. The effect was that many things in this new situation became unauditable; they audited more, but actually scrutinized less. The paper also contributes to existing literature on the role of ‘sharp’ control‐based audit in the social sector. With a ‘soft’ and ‘fuzzy’ object, as is often the case in many parts of the public sector, it is difficult to produce hard, convincing evidence that holds true in different settings.     

Mediating Interests: The Accountancy Bodies' Responses to the McFarlane Report

There is now a considerable literature on the significance for accountants of their being accepted as a profession. The claim that they have regard to ‘the public interest’ in their activities is a central feature of the accountancy bodies’ claims to being accepted as a ‘profession’. This, they argue, distinguishes them from trade associations and trade unions. The claim is significant for both their economic and symbolic value. This paper examines the accountancy bodies’ claims by examining their responses to the 1992 publication of a discussion document The Future of Auditing by the Auditing Practices Board. Responses by four major professional bodies are analysed in detail. It is concluded that most of them do not attempt to redeem the claim to have regard to the public interest. Instead, they are mainly concerned to promote their members' private interests, frequently by advocating policy measures that will advance their own members' interests at the expense of those of other accountancy bodies. The significance of the contradiction between the transparency of this advocacy and the considerable effort expended in claiming to act in the public interest is discussed.     

New development: Public sector controllership—reinventing the financial specialist as a countervailing power

Different types of ‘controllers’ can be distinguished in the public sector. The authors’ research indicates that public sector controllers acknowledge the distinctive characteristics of ‘hybrid’ controllers, but question some of the possible advantages of ‘pure’ controllers. This result could signal a decreasing share of pure controllers and thus a loss of financial expertise in the public sector. This article calls for the controller to be ‘re-invented’ as a professional who combines solid financial expertise with an independent and critical attitude towards overly ambitious politicians and managers. The general public’s support for public sector organizations could be enhanced if strong controllers counterbalance the sometimes too optimistic views of managers and politicians.     

Personal service companies and the public sector

Off-payroll workers in the UK, including personal service companies (PSCs), engaged by the public sector have been giving ‘assurance’ of their tax position to departments in the sector since 2012. Departments must be satisfied with the assurance. For PSCs this requires awareness of complex tax legislation (IR35), which is aimed at preventing tax avoidance. Costs may be incurred in attaining the necessary knowledge. This may bring into question costs incurred in protecting tax revenue. No similar obligation exists in the private sector.