International Accounting Research: The Italian Context

In a 2016 essay published by the International Journal of Accounting Research, Ray Ball discusses the reasons behind the increase in volume and quality of international accounting research in recent years. He argues that research in international accounting helps in understanding others (and, in the process, in better understanding ourselves), provides more replication options, exploits differences in national institutional structures and addresses some limitations of within-jurisdiction research (Ball, 2016). Our essay aims at providing a set of useful information about Italy to foster an understanding of the institutional setting, thereby facilitating international accounting research. It discusses Italian culture, societal values, corporate governance, GAAPs, auditing and tax regulations. In particular, it places emphasis on two features: changes in regulations (that may be used by researchers as exogenous events) and peculiarities of the Italian institutional context (that may inspire cross-country studies exploiting such different features).

Oftentimes, research ideas in the international accounting field arise from the comparison of different contexts and from the curiosity to understand how different constructs work in various settings. Despite knowledge and understanding of the institutional, cultural, and legal settings of countries are prerequisites for this kind of research, studies often focus on very narrow issues and do not allow a grasp of the big picture of the institutional feature of a country, and how this can influence managers’ decisions related to accounting choices and disclosures. This paper aims at filling this gap and at fostering an understanding of the Italian institutional setting (e.g., culture, societal values, corporate governance, GAAPs, auditing, and tax regulations), thereby facilitating the work of international accounting researchers who wish to include Italian firms in their samples.