Suchergebnisse

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of full accrual accounting on the Italian public universities and, in this context, how some technical-accounting problems typical of public sector (recognition and valuation issues) have been addressed. An additional purpose investigated in this paper is the role of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSASs) in helping to overcome these technical-accounting issues, for the case under examination.Design/methodology/approach– The paper involves studying whether, and to what degree, some of the accounting choices made by the universities complied with the principles of full accrual accounting for several specific accounting registrations characterised by the presence of recognition and valuation issues. During this investigation, the paper also analyses whether the universities followed the accounting rules set out by the IPSAS Board.Findings– The findings highlight that, in general, there is a low degree of compliance with full accrual accounting principles and they also revealed that IPSASs do not provide any detailed guidelines that can help universities in overcoming the recognition and valuation problems typical of the public sector.Originality/value– The analysis presented in the paper confirms the findings of previous literature identifying a low level of compliance to full accrual accounting principles. This research shed light also on the longstanding debate about the role of IPSASs in promoting full accrual accounting in the public sector, revealing the scarce contribution of IPSASs to this process.

The Bologna Process represents a major example of a political and institutional convergence among Higher Education (HE) policies across European countries. The main fields which are explicitly targeted by such convergence process are: curricula structure, mutual recognition of academic degrees, evaluation procedures. The aim of this work is to evaluate whether it is possible to detect an influence of the Bologna Process on financial resources invested in higher education institutions among the EU-15 countries. We analyse the financial data of HE expenditure in the period 1998-2004 (as the Bologna Declaration was set out in 1998) and, specifically, after the wide implementation of changes in curricula structure in many countries of EU-15 (after 2001). Our approach uses two different techniques: (1) regression models - considering both fixed-effects and random-effects - were used to individuate an eventual "Bologna" effect; (2) then, traditional convergence models (sigma and beta convergence) were employed to analyse this effect in more detail, more specifically to test whether the HE expenditure is converging or diverging in recent years. Our findings suggest that the Bologna Process has had a positive influence on the trend of "expenditure per student" convergence across the EU-15 countries. The estimated speed of convergence is still quite low, and this fact supports a claim for more emphasis on the role of private funding and cost-sharing in terms of European-level policies. However, the EU-15 countries' different traditions and different socio-economic characteristics are strongly affecting this process, so that the European convergence is towards different steady-levels.

The emergence of Open Access (OA) publishing has created new economic niches and debates in academic publishing. OA journals offer numerous publication outlets with differing editorial philosophies and business models. Scholars and academic stakeholders must decide which journals offer acceptable value for the direct or indirect costs of academic publishing. Our research uses the Directory of Open Access Journals (N=12,100) to identify various characteristics of OA academic journals that influence journal prices. The Journal Impact Factor (JIF), language, publisher mission, DOAJ Seal, World Bank Economic and Geographic regions of publishers, peer review duration and journal discipline are identified as factors with significant influence over journal price levels. Journals with status endowments (JIF, DOAJ Seal), published in wealthier regions, in medical or science-based disciplines, and with English-based articles are relatively more expensive. Scholarly and political economic inequalities manifest in the prices and benefits offered by different journals and publishers throughout the world.