Accuracy of cost accounting systems is a central issue in management accounting theory and practice. Over time a large set of allocation mechanisms has been developed and refined with the goal of providing accurate cost estimates of objects. Any bias in provided cost information is supposed to...

The issue of cost calculation has been largely debated in the last years under the pressure of the perceived lost of relevance of the quot;traditional cost accounting approachesquot;. The enthusiasm for new management accounting techniques has often driven the attention to the technical...

We study the incidence of supervisors' evaluation biases in a biannual incentive system in an Italian public administration. Using performance reports for 106 employees over three biannual evaluation periods (2001-2006), we analyze supervisors' intertemporal evaluation biases. We find evidence...