Does personal background influence a finance minister to cook the books? An investigation of creative accounting in Swiss cantons
| Autor: | Nils Soguel, M. Clémenceau |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2016 |
| Předmět: |
Finance
Economics and Econometrics medicine.medical_specialty business.industry media_common.quotation_subject Depreciation 05 social sciences Public sector Positive accounting Creative accounting 0506 political science Financial management Phenomenon 0502 economics and business 050602 political science & public administration Economics medicine Ideology 050207 economics business Panel data media_common |
| Zdroj: | Applied Economics. 49:941-953 |
| ISSN: | 1466-4283 0003-6846 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/00036846.2016.1208360 |
| Popis: | This article aims to identify the factors influencing the use of creative accounting in the public sector. Its distinctive feature is that it sheds light on creative accounting when used, not to hide public deficits, but to conceal surpluses. It especially explores the impact of the finance minister’s (FM)’s background on the phenomenon. We take advantage of the quasi-experimental settings of the Swiss cantons in which the financial management act sets out the possibility of implementing certain accounting gimmicks, including mainly additional ‘depreciation’ charges. These charges, which are depreciations in name only, enable the FM to artificially inflate expenses, thus increasing the deficit or reducing the surplus. Our panel data set of the 26 cantons over the period 1980–2012 includes a new data set of creative accounting and of 116 cantonal FMs. Our results indicate that the FMs cook the books irrespective of their personal or ideological background with the exception that trained economists ... |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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