Government accounting: Book-cooking guide

One of the best things about being a government is that nobody audits your accounts. Politicians have huge leeway in drawing up and presenting their budgets. Hans Hoogervorst, the plain-speaking chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), has referred to public-sector accounting as being in “a stage of primitive anarchy”. A new IMF paper offers a helpful taxonomy of government-accounting gimmicks*.

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