L’introduzione della contabilità economico-patrimoniale nelle Amministrazioni pubbliche italiane: quale ‘valore aggiunto’?

This chapter examines the expected benefits of introducing a harmonized system of accrual accounting in the context of Italian public sector entities. Accordingly, the chapter examines (i) the perimeter of accounting entries and (ii) the rules for recording and allocating the economic, financial and monetary consequences of transactions that characterize accrual-based accounting. Identifying these characteristics allows to conduct an analytical comparison with the legal-and cash-based accrual models that remain prevalent in the domain of Italian public sector entities. The comparison suggests that the benefits of accrual accounting mostly derive from the comparatively comprehensive representation of an entity’s wealth and of its variations. On the one hand, such a representation can promote the transparency and accountability of public administrations and simplify the construction of consolidated government finance statistics. On the other hand, these advantages are bigger, the larger the incidence of the elements of wealth that an entity records in its balance sheet as deferred and multiannual costs and revenues, and the more significant their variation over time. For an individual public sector entity, therefore, the expected ‘value added’ of introducing accrual accounting depends, partly, on the specific composition of the elements that are recorded as wealth and, partly, on the frequency of transactions that modify such elements.