Accounting Regimes and Fiscal Rules

Abstract

Boothe contributes to the literature that focuses on the impact of budgetary institutions on fiscal outcomes by examining the interaction between accounting regimes and fiscal rules. The paper builds and calibrates a model through which cash and accrual accounting regimes are compared and their interaction with different fiscal rules is analysed. The paper does not take position on the suitability of cash versus accrual regimes. It rather looks for the circumstances under which governments may choose to move from an accounting system to the other. The author stresses that rules which discourage deficit financing are harder to comply with under cash accounting than under accrual accounting.