Needs and prospects for public sector accounting reform: The Japanese experience

Abstract

Why does the public sector accounting reform take so much time in Japan compared with other countries? The argument for the necessity for reform was made long ago, yet why have the desired results not been seen until now? The aim of this paper is to answer these questions and to find out key to possible effective reform. Based on the survey carried out in 2013 with 786 local authorities nationwide, the author tests the following two hypotheses and reports the empirical evidence to support them; H1: there are more examples of financial documents being utilized among local authorities that adopt double-entry bookkeeping compared to those that do not, and H2: the response toward financial documents differs depending on the size of the local authority. These empirical results suggest that in the provision of public sector accounting information of clear utility, the issue of adopting double-entry bookkeeping cannot be avoided, while considering the differences in practical burdens on local administrations, this must be looked at in tandem with a rule that differentiates between different sizes of administration.