Public Finance Journal

The Municipal Financial Crisis

Kenneth W. Hunter — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Moses, M. (2022). The municipal financial crisis: A framework for understanding and fixing government budgeting. Palgrave Macmillan, 184 pp., $49.99 (paperback), ISBN: 978-3-030-87835-1.

Municipal Fiscal Stress, Bankruptcies, and Other Financial Emergencies

Jonathan B. Justice — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Guzman, T., & Ermasova, N. (2023). Municipal fiscal stress, bankruptcies, and other financial emergencies. Routledge, 310 pp., $49.95 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1-032-34938-1.

Financial Strategy for Public Managers

Stephanie Leiser — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Kioko, S., & Marlowe, J. (2023). Financial strategy for public managers (4th ed.). University of Washington, 254pp., $0.00 (ebook), ISBN: 978-1-927-47259-0. https://uw.pressbooks.pub/financialstrategy/

Establishing an Agenda for Public Budgeting and Finance Research

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Public budgeting and finance is a discipline that encompasses communities of research and practice. Too often, however, these communities fail to engage each other, instead choosing to operate independently. The result is that the research being conducted fails to address the questions of the day and our governments’ challenges. In this article, we come together as a community of academics and practitioners to establish an agenda for where future research should be conducted. This agenda aims to align the research being undertaken within the academic community with the needs of those working in the community of practice. After establishing ten areas where research is needed, we followed a ranked-choice voting process to establish a prioritization for them. Based on the outcome of this process, the two primary areas where research is currently needed most are the fiscal health of our governments and the implementation of social equity budgeting.

Modeling Approach Matters, But Not as Much as Preprocessing

Sarah E. Larson, Michael Overton — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Revenue forecasting accuracy is critical to governmental operations. This paper addresses the question: What is the best technique for forecasting sales tax revenue? Prior studies in this area have focused on the differences between machine learning techniques and traditional approaches and neglected to consider how differences in pre-processing steps for the data before the forecasting model is applied are important. Here, we show that machine learning techniques do not always provide increased forecasting accuracy. Instead, the modeling choices matter, but less than the prior literature and practice suggested. Rather, pre-processing makes the most significant difference in forecasting accuracy, and forecasters need to understand the unique characteristics of time series data to improve forecasting performance. The immediate implications of these findings are that the focus of practitioners of in sales tax revenue forecasting should shift from prioritizing model choice towards data pre-processing.

AI as a Budgeting Tool: Panacea or Pandora’s Box?

Michael Lee, Daniel Hayes, Craig S. Maher — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Local government officials are consistently tasked with doing more with less. The combination of fiscal institutions, devolution of fiscal federalism, voter frustration, and economic shocks have been the leading causes of these more recent challenges. However, the reality is that smaller local governments, by their very nature, struggle with service provision. This paper explores the next evolution of change to local governments – artificial intelligence (AI), specifically ChatGPT – and its potential for local governments. We discuss the use of AI in budgeting, with a focus on financial data management and statistical analysis, including forecasting and policy recommendations for a small Nebraska municipality. Our experience with ChatGPT highlights its powerful capabilities for data processing. Transitioning to ChatGPT-4 from ChatGPT-3.5 (with or without Python) improved data processing efficiency but introduced financial costs, and we observed that the use of detailed and precise prompts enhances output quality across all versions. Achieving a balance between time, cost, data preparation, and prompt precision is crucial for optimizing the potential of ChatGPT in financial data analysis.

Adoption of Property Tax Expenditure and Limitations by U.S. States

J. W. Decker — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Property tax expenditure and limitations (TELs) are key tools used by U.S. states to control local government spending and taxing authority. This paper employs a multiple events history analysis to understand the factors influencing the adoption of county-level property tax TELs by state governments. The findings show that external factors such as policy learning, competition, imitation, and coercion play crucial roles in this process. Notably, the study reveals that higher out-migration rates and the presence of voter-based ballot initiatives significantly increase the likelihood of TEL adoption. Additionally, the spread of TELs is influenced more by national trends rather than neighboring state actions, highlighting the saliency of these policies. These findings shed light on the dynamics of policy diffusion and provide insights into the interplay between state-level decisions and local government financial autonomy. The study’s implications extend beyond public finance, offering a nuanced understanding of policy adoption and diffusion in federal systems.

Bridging the Divide

Bruce D. McDonald III, Craig S. Maher — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The creation of Public Finance Journal (PF) is the culmination of several years of discussion about how best to address the divide between practitioners’ research needs and academic scholarship. PF’s origin is predicated on the expectation that for a professional discipline such as public administration and the subfield of public budgeting and finance, in particular, there needs to be an easily accessible forum for the dissemination of ideas and solutions. This journal would not be possible without the support of the Government Finance Officers Association, the oversight committees, the editorial board, and those helping with the journal’s management. We are excited about the inaugural edition, where we have reviews of three important books, three thought-provoking research articles, and an article that surveys current research needs in the budget and finance field as expressed by faculty and practitioners.

Back Matter

The Editors — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Publication License, Submission Information and Back Cover

Front Matter

The Editors — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Front Cover and Editorial Board

The Editors — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Public Finance Journal

The Municipal Financial Crisis

Municipal Fiscal Stress, Bankruptcies, and Other Financial Emergencies

Financial Strategy for Public Managers

Establishing an Agenda for Public Budgeting and Finance Research

Modeling Approach Matters, But Not as Much as Preprocessing

AI as a Budgeting Tool: Panacea or Pandora’s Box?

Adoption of Property Tax Expenditure and Limitations by U.S. States

Bridging the Divide

Back Matter

Front Matter

Table of Contents