The twenty-first century has witnessed significant changes in the policy and practice of budgeting and financial management at the federal, state, and local government levels. This course will connect budgetary theory with practice and will provide students with budgeting and financial management tools. In this class, students will become familiar with the general context and evolution of public budgeting in the United States. Students will also gain familiarity with the technical aspect of budgetary decision-making. In order to do so, we will: (i) review strategies of various participants; (ii) examine revenue sources, expenditure areas, and balanced budget requirements for all levels of government in an intergovernmental context; (iv) examine personal services, operating, and capital budgets. Students will also learn budgeting techniques and analytical models that will help them with answering important policy questions. This century has raised a number of important financial management issues. As a class, we will discuss topics such as cash management, risk management, procurement, debt management, and cutback management.
This course will review finance and fiscal policy challenges facing federal, state, and local governments. We will examine issues central to public expenditure programs, and taxation policies. Students will seek practical solutions to planning, implementation, and reporting problems in public finance. The course will discuss budgetary formation, deliberation, adoption, implementation and execution. Further, each aspect of finance policy will be examined in order to understand the process, functions, and history of public budgeting reform. The course will discuss revenue policy, the spending of public resources, dynamics of changing budget processes, and issues associated with balancing budgets. Students – in the role of citizens, administrators, and public officials – shall engage public finance policy issues of concern to them in pursuit of fairness.
This course is self-paced and work is done asynchronously - there will be no regular class meetings.