Municipal Corporations : A Study of The Accounting Choice

Abstract: Accounting choice has prior to this dissertation been studied comprehensively in the private sector, and in a small extent in the public sector. The purpose of this study is to explain what factors influence the accounting choice in municipal corporations. The dependent variable, accounting choice, has been limited to explain if the municipal corporations either use the fair-value method or the cost-depreciation method when considering asset value loss. The independent variables are partly derived from the New Public Management, which is an umbrella term for the decentralisation of public state authority. The findings of the study indicate that the factors municipal corporations’ dual role does not influence the accounting choice. However, a correlation between the turnover and the use of the fair-value method has been found. The study also shows that there is a correlation between the regulations of the Municipal Act and the use of fair-value method. Furthermore, only one of the hypotheses was found significant. This stated that there is a positive correlation between the financing from the private sector and the use of cost-depreciation method to value tangible assets. The findings indicate that one cannot study municipal corporations as a single phenomenon (i.e. no municipal corporations is another alike). This is because they incorporate charachteristics from both the public and the private sector, and thus, have different levels of publicness. The limitation of this study is that the dependent variable accounting choice is only considering the asset value loss (i.e. fair-value and cost-depreciation method), and thus, does not give a holistic picture of the research field.