Empirical Studies in Financial Accounting

Abstract In the democratic society, governments are elected by vote of citizens and power ultimately rests in the hands of the citizenry. In such society, government accountability is based on the belief that the citizenry" has right to know "and government must declare facts openly and communicate it by appropriate means. After the past two decades of 20th century governmental accounting and financial reporting play a major role in fulfilling government's duty to be publicly accountable in a democratic society. This paper examine the role of expected accountability - based accounting and financial reporting as a tool to assist in fulfilling government's duty to be publicly accountable and enable members of parliament to assess that accountability .We send 180 questionnaires to members of parliament as well as comptroller general senior auditors as accountee and 180 to chief executives as well as chief financial officers of ministries as accounters. The  findings  of  this  study  show  that   all  accountors  and  accountees believe  expected  accountability  -based  accounting  and  financial  reporting play  the significant role in fulfilling government to be publicly  accountable and   assist   parliament   and   comptroller   general   to   assess   government accountability.

Abstract In a democratic society, Power ultimately rests in the hands of the citizen ry. The citizens delegate that power to public officials through the election process.
In such society accountability requires government to answer the citizenry - to justify the raising of public resources and the purposes of which they are used.
Govern mental accountability is based on the belief that the citizenry  has  a " right  to  know", a  right  to  receive   only declared facts that may lead to public debate by the citizens and their elected representatives. Accounting and financial reporting plays a major role in fulfilling government's duty to be publicly accountable in the democratic society (GASB, 1993). The main purpose of this research is assessing accountability of governmental accounting and financial reporting system of Islamic Republic of Iran. In accordance to that purpose this research 1s divided to three stages as described below: Review and study governmental accounting and financial reporting conceptual framework and principles in order to determine key elements which affect the level of governmental accounting and financial reporting’s accountability Obtaining the opinion of accounting and auditing experts and university lecturers about key elements of accounting and financial reporting system in order to obtain general agreement of those experts by Delphi survey technique. Comparing characteristics of Islamic Republic government financial reporting system, with those selected criterion in order to assess accountability of Iran financial reporting system. The results of those three stages of research, shows that Iran 's Islamic Republic government reporting system has major deficiencies in fulfilling government accountability  in the field of budgetary control, recognition of actual revenues and expenditures, general long term debts, capital asset , financial position and results of operations on the comprehensive annual financial report. Finally, researcher has made some recommendation in order to improve major deficiencies of governmental accounting and reporting system.