A Study On Introduction Of Accrual Accounting In Government Based On Performance Governance

Introduction of accrual accounting in government have been a worldwide tendency from the 1980s. However, in comparison with the tendency, this government accounting reform is called into question by international academy. Based on this background, this paper is mainly concerning with answering questions of three levels. Main question of the first level is whether this reform is needed. Main question of the second level is how to carry out it. Main question of the third level is how to look at the significance of the first two questions for China. The content of this paper is summarized as follows:Legitimacy of modern government is given by social contract. The significance of social contract is to improve public welfare by means of social cooperation. While the government is vital for the realization of the objective of social contract, it often has performance problems. According to analysis on the mechanism of social contract, this paper argues that the profound reason of government performance problems lies in the severe information cost pressure which can frustrate public supervision and legislative supervision.Accordingly, in order to resolve the performance problems of government, the severe information asymmetry and the severe information cost pressure must be decreased, which means that the transparency of government operation must be improved. Mechanism of performance governance is an important mechanism which has evolved during long period of time to improve government transparency and government performance. Government accounting is an important component of this mechanism as an information system.The evolvement of performance governance paradigm calls for the changing of the objective model of government accounting, and the introduction of accrual accounting in government.After these discussion, this paper analyses the government accounting reform mainly from two perspectives. The one perspective is focused on the technological principle of government accounting reform, while the other perspective is focused on the institution implementation of government accounting reform.This paper mainly discusses configuration of accrual accounting system, conceptual framework of government accounting and model of information disclosure technologically. This paper also discusses institution supply and implementation performance of government accounting reform institutionally.