IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/ijaape/v8y2012i3p203-222.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Cash versus accrual accounting measures in Greek municipalities: proxies or not for decision-making?

Author

Listed:
  • Sandra Cohen

Abstract

Cash figures still constitute the main basis for performance assessment and resource allocation decisions in the Greek public sector even though accrual accounting information is available. The scope of this paper is to compare accrual accounting and cash accounting figures in order to assess whether such a policy could be justified on the grounds of cash eventually reflecting a fair proxy of accrual measures. Our analysis is based on 370 municipality observations over the period 2002 to 2004. The empirical findings of our study show that approximately 70% of the accrual revenues (expenses) figures can be explained on the basis of cash based revenues (expenses) as well as specific municipality socio-economic factors. Our findings shed light on the long-lasting Greek public administration shortcomings that may have contributed to the public sector financial crisis that Greece is experiencing since the end of 2009.

Suggested Citation

  • Sandra Cohen, 2012. "Cash versus accrual accounting measures in Greek municipalities: proxies or not for decision-making?," International Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Performance Evaluation, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 8(3), pages 203-222.
    • Handle: RePEc:ids:ijaape:v:8:y:2012:i:3:p:203-222
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=47807
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:ijaape:v:8:y:2012:i:3:p:203-222. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=41 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.