It is widely believed that the adoption of quality public sector accounting practices can assist in reducing corruption. In theory, accounting reform, especially the shift from cash‐to accrual‐based methods, leads to the production of much improved financial information, which ultimately can be used by citizens to hold government more accountable and limit corruption. Empirical evidence from cross‐country analyses appears to support the theoretical predictions. We investigate the impact of accounting practices on corruption among districts in Indonesia. We use external financial audits to measure the adoption of reforms and the number of corruption case court convictions as our proxy for corruption. We estimate Poisson regression models using instrumental variable techniques to identify the causal effects of adopting accrual‐based accounting procedures on corruption. We show that the employment of improved accounting methods is strongly associated with declining corruption. However, after accommodating the endogeneity of accounting practices, we determine that reform adoption has no effect on corruption.

中文翻译：

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公共部门会计改革对腐败的影响：印尼地方政府的因果证据

人们普遍认为，采用优质的公共部门会计惯例可以帮助减少腐败。从理论上讲，会计改革，特别是从现金制向权责发生制的转变，导致了财务信息的改善，最终公民可以利用这些信息使政府承担更大的责任，并限制腐败。跨国分析的经验证据似乎支持理论预测。我们调查了会计惯例对印度尼西亚各地区腐败的影响。我们使用外部财务审计来衡量改革的采用和腐败案件法院定罪的次数，以此作为我们腐败的代理。我们使用工具变量技术估算Poisson回归模型，以确定采用基于权责发生制的会计程序对腐败的因果关系。我们表明，采用改进的会计方法与腐败的下降有密切关系。但是，在适应会计惯例的内生性之后，我们确定采用改革对腐败没有影响。