THE ROLE OF ACCRUAL ACCOUNTING FOR FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY IN LOCAL GOVERNMENTS: A CASE STUDY

This paper aims to deepen the financial condition in the municipality of Rome analyzing the effects of accrual accounting in the financial reports. The study has been focused on a first plan of rebalancing the debts collected over the years, launched in 2008, and on a second one of reducing the expenditures, started in 2015. The city of Rome represents an interesting case-study because the implemented strategies on financial sustainability have brought some positive effects in a situation of financial crisis. The case study pursues the financial resilience through the combination of capacities and reactions such as management of slack resources, income generation (Barbera et al., 2015) and more attention on the meaning of the measures and indicators coming from the public accounting system.