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"This lecture notes provides an overview of budgeting and financial management in the public and non-profit sectors. Fundamental concepts and practices of budgeting, financial management and public finance are introduced, with special emphasis on state and local government budgeting and financial management in the United States. The objectives of courses in Public Budgeting and this title are to teach the basic concepts and nomenclature of public finance, to develop an understanding of budget processes as well as the sources and uses of public revenues, and to make relatively simple, but useful computations in an intelligent way. Key course learning outcomes include the abilities to: explain and assess key elements of government budgeting processes; apply concepts of cost accounting and analysis to understand agency expenditure needs; design and produce a flexible budget for a government agency; and apply concepts and measures of efficiency, equity, and adequacy to the evaluation of government revenue policies. There are no indispensable pre-requisites by the reader, and it has been designed for students from a wide variety of backgrounds and undergraduate majors. Although this works well as an introductory text to a broader public administration curriculum, it also can make sense for students to take after some more basic courses in economics, policy analysis, and public organizations. Issues of tax incidence and the effect of taxes on economic efficiency can be covered in greater depth."--Publisher's website

This article will examine progress made in the field of public expenditure theory in the quarter century since Burkhead and Miner (1971). First, normative expenditure theory will be examined along with its influence on analytic techniques, such as cost‐benefit analysis. The second area of analysis will be empirical research on public expenditure decisions. Finally, areas for future research will be identified.

During the Great Recession, local governments experienced unprecedented fiscal stress. Among localities, special‐purpose governments are especially vulnerable to recessions due to their reliance on sole revenue sources. School districts are one example that depends heavily on state aid on top of property taxes. However, the literature is very thin on the savings behavior of special‐purpose governments. This paper contributes to filling the niche: it uses a 28‐year panel of fiscal and socio‐economic data for school districts in New York State to examine the determinants of fund balances. Our findings show that the savings of school districts are affected by their size, fiscal capacity, and revenue portfolio. The results are similar for reserved funds and unreserved funds, which suggests that school districts use reserved funds as a savings mechanism. However, the savings are not necessarily related to economic cycles.

This paper explores how state saving behavior is affected by two fiscal/budgetary institutions—budget stabilization funds (BSF) and balanced budget requirements (BBR). While adopted for different reasons, BSF and BBR could have significant effects on state savings behavior depending on their design features. We empirically examine the effects of BSF and BBR using a panel data set that covers three business cycles, controlling for budgetary institutions, state economy, social services, politics, and business cycles. The paper finds that adopting BSF and BBR can raise savings by 2 and 3 percentage points, respectively; however, the effects depend crucially on the devices' design.

Procurement is an essential business function of government. Despite the importance of effective procurement practices to government efficiency, very little is known about what local governments do in practice, and how procurement practices affect government spending. This paper reports the results of a survey on procurement practices used by New York State school districts. To examine the potential costs savings from adoption of particular procurement practices, the authors estimate cost models for materials, supplies, and equipment spending. Results from the cost model indicate that the use of competitive bidding, purchasing calendars, central warehouses, and bidders lists are associated with significant cost savings.