Management and Valuation of Heritage Assets. A Comparative Analysis Between Italy and Us

Heritage assets (HA) are a vital resource for the entities operating in the heritage sector, which is in the most of the cases covered and managed by non-profit public or private organizations. The HAs’ exposure and maintenance is the essence of the above mentioned entities. Premised that, many entities are not used to measuring the value of HAs, as, on one hand, this is sometimes difficult and, on the other hand, it can be excessively costly with respect to the correlated disclosure benefits. The growing application of the (full or modified) accrual basis of accounting in the public and non-profit sectors has extended and reanimated this issue. This manuscript applies the comparative method, in order to provide new information on the analysed subject. Specifically, after having investigated the different theoretical and technical proposals, it compares the reporting behaviour of significant cases of Italian and American public and private entities, moving from different cultural and management approaches.