EMPIRICAL STUDY OF INTANGIBLE ASSETS IN ROMANIAN MUNICIPALITIES

While economies are becoming more and more knowledge based, investment in intangibles assets becomes important tools for management if they are properly measured and recognized. While the literature states that the economic success is based on the effective utilization of intangible assets, in the public sector there is low level of interest in their identification, measurement and disclosure. In the light of the theoretical evidences, the purpose of our research is to verify the developed stage of intangible assets process in Romanian municipalities as regards the awareness, measurement and disclosure in 2012 annual reports. Also, the paper presents the most influential factors of intangible assets information disclosure. In order to do this, a disclosure index has been created, based on the requirements related to the intangible assets, taking into account the referential of Romanian regulations (OMFP 1917 updated) and International Public Sector Accounting Standards The research is based on content analysis and in-depth interviews methods for collecting data from the 104 Romanian municipalities. The analysis led to the conclusion that the disclosure index of intangible assets is 0.28, where the municipality population and assets are the variables that are considered explanatory of the variation of the disclosure index in the regression analysis performed. There were identified no supplementary measurement ways of intangible assets voluntary disclosed, although the Romanian municipalities present some characteristics related to intangible assets. While management control is more and more important in local public administration, aiming to improve internal performance, the measurement and disclosure of intangible assets becomes a goal.