Double-entry bookkeeping and balance of payments: the need for developing a new approach

Abstract

On the basis of the identity between each country's global imports (commercial and financial) and exports (commercial and financial), which is one of the fundamental economic principles of the balance of payments, the paper highlights why and how the leading account of transactions from/to the rest of the world needs to be reformed. As a strategic goal, the balance of payments should finally move beyond its current purely statistical and simple-entry bookkeeping approach in order to improve its macroeconomic relevance. This would also imply a new way of carrying out cross-border payments, which could in turn pave the way for a new system of international payments. The development of an economic account of the nation as a whole and the introduction of a consistent way of recording transactions following a truly double-entry bookkeeping would also erase statistical discrepancies ex ante and reflect the necessary equality (identity) of credits and debits both for all transactions taken together and for each of them separately. The balance of payments is already a powerful economic tool, but only through a money-consistent reform would it display its full potential.

Integration of Slovakia’s double-entry bookkeeping into the EU system

“…Thorough harmonization means correct reporting of business activities and this is what the authors deal with in the work (Jensen, 1986;Riahi-Belkaoui, 2000;Riahi-Belkaoui, 2000;Tumpach, 2006;Saxunová, et al 2009;Kršeková, 2011;Farkaš, 2020;Beretta, Cencini, 2020;Sidak, Hajnišová, Fabuš, 2020;Schroeder, 2000;Hajnal, 2021;Hillebrandt, Leino-Sandberg, 2021). Similarly, other literature (Epstein, Mirza, 2006) pays attention to accounting standards in terms of their origin and their subsequent interpretation in various types of organizations across their breadth.…”

National Budget Sustainability in Challenges of the Pandemic

“…There is a lot of attention to issues of collecting budget revenues in international scientific literature (e.g. Subačienė et al, 2019;Beretta, Cencini, 2020;Mazzanti et al, 2020;Bikas, Bagdonaitė, 2020;Čižo et al, 2020;Vasconcelos, 2021).…”

Dysfonctionnement du système des paiements intra-européens

“…Le rapport entre la crise de la dette publique et les crises des balances des paiements est souvent évoqué dans la littérature (McCombie et Thirlwall, 1994; Iggins et Litgaard, 2014; Lucarelli, 2017; Beretta et Cencini, 2020. Le débat autour de la question des similarités de la crise de la zone euro à une crise des balances des paiements suscite de vifs échanges autour de l'identification des facteurs à l'origine de la crise de la zone euro (Cesaratto, 2013; Sinn et Wollmershäuser, 2012a; Lavoie, 2015a.…”

“…Autrement dit, le fait que les transactions commerciales et financières soient enregistrées séparément les unes des autres expose la balance des paiements à des inexactitudes pouvant atteindre des milliards. Ce faisant, la logique comptable en partie double (qui implique nécessairement l'équilibre identique entre le compte courant et le compte de capital et financier) est ouvertement négligée, faisant de la balance des paiements un simple instrument statistique (Beretta et Cencini, 2020).…”