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Public And Private Sector Accounting

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Introduction
The major debate in accounting is about the appropriateness of adopting the private-sector accounting standards and practices to the public sector. Some researches support there is no distinction between the public and the private sector. For example, McGregor (1999) thought these two sectors are primarily similar in physical characteristics of assets. However, the against side believes that in some public activities, the application of accounting standards for public sector entities is inconsistent with the business sectors (Guthrie, 1998; Barton, 1999).
This report concerns on evaluating three major issues between public and private sectors accounting: 1) a sector-neutral approach chosen by accounting regulators; 2) the impact of applying a sector-neutral approach to public-sector accounting; 3) the adequate information generated by current approach meet the different information needs of users from public and private sectors.
After the Introduction, I will analysis these three issues by providing critiques and literature reviews on different opinions in following section and give a conclusion.
Literature review and Evaluation
The public sector is one of the most important sectors of any countries. The public sector entities offer services, goods or programs to public for non-profit purpose. However, the private sector is mainly composed by for-profit entities. In this report, I will regard the public sector entities as government or government-controlled

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