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The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is an infectious respiratory illness afflicting people to a degree not seen since the flu pandemic of 1968 when approximately one million lives were lost worldwide. What makes COVID-19 distinct is the rate at which it spread throughout the world, stress-testing health care systems and stymieing global economies. To confront this unprecedented crisis, nearly every country has been developing a wide range of policy responses, including fiscal measures. This study aims to discuss government fiscal responses to the pandemic from a financial management perspective. The core question is, "How does each country's financial management system support its fiscal responses to the crisis?" We are particularly interested in reexamining commonly accepted norms about fiscal federalism and the fiscal condition of national and local governments heading into this pandemic. This study takes a comparative approach to the question, focusing on South Korea and the United States. Our findings suggest that the ability to respond to this pandemic in a comprehensive and effective manner is challenged by each nation's financial management system that generates variation in policy coordination and responsiveness.

The COVID-19 Crisis is urgent, global in scale, and has generated a massive impact globally. During the outbreak of the crisis, well-designed fiscal strategies play a critical role in effective crisis management. This article uses an international and comparative perspective to find fiscal strategies used by four countries including China, South Korea, the United States, and Italy to manage the COVID-19 crisis for the period of April 2020 to December 2021. It examines key similarities and differences regarding to these major fiscal strategies adopted by the four countries. This article offers important lessons and summarizes effective practices for other countries that were considering fiscal strategies to manage and deal with the economic and fiscal impacts induced by the COVID-19 crisis.

Though the fiscal slack literature has advanced over the past decade, more research is needed for a systematic understanding of the determinants and uses of fiscal reserves at the local level. This paper reviews theory and empirical evidence on the determinants of municipal fiscal reserves offers a conceptual framework for analyzing fiscal reserves accumulation and tests a series of hypotheses using a panel of 2007–2012 financial data for 145 U.S. cities from 21 states. Generalized least squares models show that unassigned general fund balances and unrestricted net assets are positively associated with general fund surpluses in the previous year and with local household incomes, while not being related to measures of fiscal risk, revenue effort, and voter characteristics. Overall, the findings suggest a relatively stronger influence of the capacity to save than the need to save on local fiscal reserves.

Interlocal collaboration is considered an important tool for cost‐saving. States, therefore, have incentivized interlocal collaboration in different ways. To understand the budgetary consequences of interlocal collaboration and state incentives, we examine counties in Nebraska where the State uses two incentive mechanisms—resource restrictions and additional access to restricted revenues granted to counties with collaboration. This study finds that county expenditures are lower when they spend more through collaboration. While this lower spending is related to lower revenues in counties less constrained by state restrictions, the results for counties more constrained are unclear. State incentive structures may matter for such variations.

Tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) have been widely imposed on state and local governments. A substantial amount of research has been conducted on the effects of TELs, however, most have assumed that a TEL is equally binding on every local government in the state. This may not be the case; the degree to which a TEL constrains a jurisdiction is dependent on its position and context at the time of the TEL implementation, and, further, the responses of these governments might then be expected to be different over time. This study uses data for counties and special purpose districts in Nebraska, where property tax limits became effective in FY1999; we consider a variety of intended and unintended consequences over the 15 years under the limit. Our findings show the fiscal responses to and effects of the limits and how they vary between county governments that were more versus less restricted.

AbstractRecent fiscal condition literature has been attentive to the consistency between subjective measures of local fiscal condition based on public officials' perceptions and their objective counterparts measured using financial data. Studies have found little evidence of a relationship between them, leading scholars to speculate flaws in measurement or intentional lack of association. This study reevaluates the issue by investigating intervening explanations for the absence of connection. Analyzing survey and audited financial data from 185 municipalities across 31 states, we identify various individual and organizational attributes that help clarify the association between the two types of fiscal condition measures.

"Understanding Municipal Fiscal Health provides an in-depth assessment of the fiscal health of cities throughout the USA. The book examines the tools currently available to cities for designing a revenue structure, measuring fiscal conditions and measuring fiscal health. It explains how artificial policies such as tax and expenditure limitations influence fiscal policies, and how communities can overcome socioeconomic and state-policy barriers to produce strong fiscal conditions. The authors go beyond simple theory to analyze patterns of fiscal health using actual financial, demographic and TEL data from an accurate data source, the Government Financial Officers Association survey. The book offers a solid basis of empirical evidence including quantitative case studies - complete with discussion questions - to help practitioners better understand the environment in which they are functioning and the policy tools they need to help advocate for change. This book teaches the reader the science and art of municipal financial analysis, and will be invaluable for local and state officials, analysts, and students and researchers"--