Abstract
This study aims to assess the outcomes of the Late Payments Directive (LPD), in the Portuguese subnational governments, which is essential for the sustainability of their commercial debt. It proposes that the control measure of the payment behavior is permeable to creative accounting practices. The investigation is based on a quantitative study of the 308 Portuguese subnational governments, from 2011 to 2017. The data were obtained from the official releases of the Directorate-General of Local Authorities (DGAL). The paper provides empirical insights about the actual outcomes of LPD. It suggests that the official data reported by Portuguese subnational governments is not reliable and does not enable the accurate evaluation of the LPD outcomes, not setting a common methodology for measuring the payment behavior of public authorities neither in Portugal, nor when compared with other Member States. Although all the data was obtained from DGAL, its lack of reliability is highlighted. Researchers are encouraged to study the control measures of the payment’s behavior adopted by other Member States.
The paper contributes to the knowledge of the Portuguese actual outcomes of LPD implementation at subnational governments and proposes new control measures.
Keywords
- Payment behavior measure
- LPD outcomes
- Financial sustainability
- Subnational public governance
- Nonreliable Reports
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by IDI&CA 2019 of the Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa (IPL/2019/AVLCPA_ISCAL).
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dos Santos, P.G., Martinho, C. (2021). Measures to Assess the Payment Behavior of the Portuguese Subnational Governments. In: Bilgin, M.H., Danis, H., Demir, E., Vale, S. (eds) Eurasian Economic Perspectives. Eurasian Studies in Business and Economics, vol 16/1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63149-9_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63149-9_3
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