Governmental Accounting Systems in Europe and United States of America

Public entities use accounting systems that differ from those applied by private enterprises to meet specific requirements of the public sector. Thereby legislative reforms of the accounting systems are underway to improve the public entities' economic and political capacity to act. One of these reforms is the implementation of the double-entry accounting in Germany. Furthermore the European Union developed the International Public Sector Accounting Standards to harmonize the accounting systems and to enhance the understandability of financial statements as well as to ensure comparability of financial statements between public entities belonging to the European Union. In the USA uniform accounting standards mandatory for state and local governments exists since 1984 and are improved continually to meet users' needs and especially to enables them to assess the government's financial position. Diana Walkinstik-man-alone analyzes the financial statements concerning how they comply with their individual objectives. Moreover she examines which accounting system is more suitable to enhance economic and political capacity to act.