Cultural heritage and accounting reform: valuation instances

The ACCRUAL reform outlined by the implementation of the EU Council Directive 2011/85/EU for defining accounting principles and standards in public administrations also involves Italian artistic and cultural heritage assets. In the Next Generation EU (National Recovery and Resilience Plan), cultural heritage and culture, in general, are considered as determinants of development from a recovery perspective. Thus, the idea of cultural heritage as a bundle of values and as a mean for sustainable growth, human development, and quality of life has been consolidated. Within such a context, this contribution aims to stimulate reflection on the economic and financial dimension of cultural heritage in the public administrations’ balance sheets and on the contribution that the discipline of Appraisal and Evaluation can provide to defining the methodological framework necessary for estimating their value. Starting from the acknowledgement of the coexistence of a plurality of values characterizing cultural heritage, particular attention has been paid to the economic dimension of Heritage and the evaluation challenges the accounting principles have introduced consistently with the Italian position in the process of defining the conceptual framework and the accounting guidelines.