Public Sector Accounting in Europe: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

There has been an increased interest in public sector accounting research due to the changing standards worldwide with harmonization on the horizon. Despite this trend, there is still a lack of comprehension of national and local governments’ role in adopting and improving the international standards to enhance accountability, transparency and developing a more consistent and evolved society. This article aims to systematically review the literature on public accounting in European countries by examining the research trends.

The analysis is developed through a bibliometric study based on three keywords: “Public Sector”, “Accounting”, and “Europe”. We systematically analyze the articles in the Web of Science database.

This work presents several articles through a bibliometric study based on defined keywords. To define the relationship between the articles and the most cited authors, we based the systematic analysis on the aggregation of articles by clusters.

In the last twenty years, public accounting in Europe has undergone significant changes, adapting to needs and innovations, which the most prominent resides in new accounting standards.

Adopting International Public Sector Accounting Standards can benefit countries that introduce them into their system, namely increasing the system’s responsibility and transparency.

Research is inevitably limited by the impact of public accounting changes in Europe and governments’ responses to social, economic and fiscal environments.

This systematic review shed light on the challenges that public management has faced recently.