Public Finance

Strategic Public Finance takes a multidisciplinary approach to public finance. It considers the nature of public finance and its symbiotic relationship with economy and society. It considers its philosophical underpinnings, the nature of the services it finances, its relative scale, how it is raised and spent, its possible beneficial and adverse effects, its sustainability, the appropriate governmental level of decision making, the means by which it can be disbursed, and an optimal strategy for public finance.

Economic globalization has been accompanied by implementation of education reforms linked to accountability and public finance schemes that emphasize student choice in schools and student loans in higher education. In the U.S. these reforms are rationalized based on intermediate variables, like the number of math credits completed in high school and net prices. However, the reforms rationalized based on this research are seldom evaluated in relation to outcomes (i.e., measures of student achievement and equal opportunity to attain an education). In Education and the Public Interest the editor re-examines the political rationales for these reforms. John Rawls’s theory of justice is reconstructed to develop a framework for assessing the effects of public policy on these outcomes. This volume undertakes a comparative study of the states in the U.S. to examine how education reforms influence student achievement, high school graduation, and college access; and finance schemes influence college access. Policies implemented by states in the 1990s were associated with improved achievement, as measured by test scores for high school students. These policies also correlate with increased high school drop out rates and the widening gap in college enrolment rates across income groups. This volume considers how privatization and accountability policies can be reconstructed to reduce inequality while continuing to improve student achievement and college enrolment.

In this volume, based on a week-long symposium at the University of Munich's Center for Economic Studies, two leading scholars of governmental economics debate their divergent perspectives on the role of government and its fiscal functions.

Governments confront difficult political choices when they must determine how to balance their spending.