A broad debate about the harmonization of public sector accounting standards in Europe is underway. The authors provide arguments in favour of harmonization, but they also acknowledge the existing pluralism and diversity by taking stock of the state of play in 14 European countries. The paper makes a proposal for a way forward for policy-makers and standard-setters, in which the benefits of harmonization can be obtained without obliging EU member countries to necessarily abandon their current public sector accounting systems.

Universities have a critical role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), both for implementing active policies and for encouraging other actors to participate. This requires having the skills and mind-sets to contribute to these challenges. The relevance and the commitment of universities to sustainability has led to the inclusion of SDGs in the strategies and agendas of these institutions. This requires the involvement of all the actors and some structural and cultural changes that put SDGs at the core of the governance and management of the university, embracing all the stakeholders. Various internal and external factors may influence the impact and success of the policies and activities aiming at achieving the SDGs, both from an overall perspective and for individual SDGs. This paper assesses the influence of some internal factors, such as the presence of universities on the internet, the level of internationalization or the availability of financial resources. Through both regression analyses and the Gephi method, our results confirm the importance of the presence on the internet, the internationalization of the university and the financial resources for research and infrastructure received from regional governments for Spanish public universities to make a greater contribution to SDGs.

The paper analyzes whether transparency, the quality of budgetary management and the strength of audit institutions have a positive effect on corruption and can increase trust in governments from a comparative analysis. The study is based on panel data from 75 countries worldwide about transparency and corruption published by international organizations, testing a relation between the transparency and accountability of a country and corruption and trust in governments has been tested. The results show that transparency, the quality of budgetary management and audit systems positively affect the perception of corruption. Consequently, politicians must consider enhancing the elaboration and disclosing of accounting information as a tool to improve public management and reduce the perception of corruption. However, it is not found that transparency or strengthening the Supreme Audit Institutions increases the level of confidence.

The International Public Sector Accounting Standards have been seen as a path towards the modernization of governmental accounting, and many countries have made efforts to adopt them. The purpose of this article is to analyse the stimuli and barriers to the adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards, as well as their main benefits, using a structural equation model. The research methodology is based on a questionnaire sent to American and European Union countries that has been used to construct a structural model, and our results show that comparability and modernization are direct benefits of International Public Sector Accounting Standards implementation, and that both adopter and non-adopter countries value these positive impacts. This justifies the process of harmonization that the European Commission recently started. Points for practitioners: The analysis of the impact of International Public Sector Accounting Standards in the international context shows to what extent the adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards are useful for modernizing governmental accounting and achieving accounting comparability. Describing the experience of countries that have adopted International Public Sector Accounting Standards can help practitioners and professionals who participate in modernizing accounting systems, such as the European Union. Many countries are now moving towards International Public Sector Accounting Standards and the experiences of pioneer countries can serve as a learning process. This article shows that introducing International Public Sector Accounting Standards can have many advantages in practice and that countries that have implemented these standards consider that they allow an increase in transparency and accountability.

Examinations of the growth in the adoption of International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) at a global level have focused on Anglo-Saxon countries. This paper considers the implications of IPSAS adoption in Spain. The authors found that a combination of factors, such as the political need to demonstrate improvements in public sector accountability, ‘code-law’ based systems of governance, European Union pressures for the harmonization of business accounting and the credibility resulting from major international institutions adopting IPSAS, all contributed to its legitimation in Spain.