Co-creating value between PFM institutions: An integrated approach towards financial sustainability

Over the last decades fiscal deficits and public debt among OECD countries increased drastically. In this context instruments fostering fiscal discipline have been promoted to restore the financial situation and to ensure... [ view full abstract ]

Over the last decades fiscal deficits and public debt among OECD countries increased drastically. In this context instruments fostering fiscal discipline have been promoted to restore the financial situation and to ensure sustainability in public spending policy in order to preserve future service delivery capacity (IMF, 2009). The theoretical fundaments justifying fiscal discipline have been originally developed by public choice scholars like Buchanan (1958, 1964, 1991) with his well-known golden rule of public finance or like Tollison and Wagner (1987), who advocated fiscal/budget rules in order to contain the government size. While most literature focuses on fiscal performance in the presence of fiscal rules (Yerly, 2013; Alesina, Hausmann, Hommes & Stein, 1999) or the analysis of different design options (Yerly, 2013), only few authors consider the accounting dimension and technical aspects despite the fact that fiscal rules (debt breaks) usually build on accrual accounting information (Bergmann, 2012). Yet, this connection was subject of research concerned with the rise of creative accounting and fiscal gimmickry in the presence of fiscal rules (Von Hagen & Wolff, 2006; Koen & Van den Noord, 2005; Milesi-Ferretti, 2003), which was inspired by political economy literature advocating that politicians and public decision makers have a strong incentive to embellish budget balance (Alesina & Perotti, 1995). Following this avenue of research, this paper serves the illumination of the connection between debt break mechanisms and the adoption of accrual public sector accounting standards and principles in the interface of political economy in the Swiss context. By explicitly considering the technical accounting dimension, this paper develops an integrated conceptual view on well-established Public Financial Management (PFM) institutions and elaborates how their interdependencies can co-create value with regard to the contemporary challenge of fiscal sustainability. Derivation of this integrated view follows an explorative approach, taking into account expert interviews with director level staff from cantonal finance administrations and policy documents, as well as literature from both research areas – public sector accounting and political economy.