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We cannot understand Manhattan in the 21st century by relying on conventional measures of urban activity. Simply put, Manhattan consists of much more than its residential population and daily workforce. This island, measuring just 22.96 square miles, serves approximately 4 million people on a typical weekday, 2.9 million on a weekend day, and a weekday night population of 2.05 million. Manhattan, with a residential population of 1.6 million more than doubles its daytime population as a result of the complex network of tunnels, bridges, railroad lines, subways, commuter rail, ferry systems, bicycle lanes, and pedestrian walkways that link Manhattan to the surrounding counties, cities and towns.

This transportation infrastructure, largely built during the twentieth century, is operated by the City of New York, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. The infrastructure network generates a constant flow of people who are responsible for Manhattan's emergence as a world capital for finance, media, fashion, and the arts.

The residential population count does not include the 1.6 million commuters who enter Manhattan every weekday, or the hundreds of thousands of visitors who use Manhattan's tourist attractions, hospitals, universities, and nightclubs. This report analyzes the volume of people flowing in and out of Manhattan during a 24-hour period; we provide an upper estimate of the actual number of people in Manhattan during a typical work day.

Economic theory suggests that it is optimal for governments to use precautionary saving as a countercyclical tool. However, the availability of surplus funds often triggers political pressure for tax cuts and spending increases. Mechanisms for alleviating that pressure include limiting the transparency of slack resources and limiting politicians' discretion to use slack resources for purposes other than stabilization. This article investigates the extent to which these two mechanisms are substitutes. In particular, the authors examine whether the widespread adoption of budget stabilization funds (BSFs) in the U.S. states over the past several decades has been accompanied by a decline in conservative revenue forecast bias. Using panel data from 47 states over a 22-year period, they find that the adoption of a BSF reduces revenue underestimation by approximately two-thirds; however, the size of the effect depends in part on how much a state saves in the BSF and the rules governing BSF deposits and withdrawals. The results suggest that BSFs have the unintended effect of increasing fiscal transparency.

The static trade-off and pecking order capital structure theories are analyzed and applied to nonprofit organizations. In addition, this paper also considers how nonprofits adjust their leverage over time. The analyses consider the unique role of donor-restricted endowments in the decision to borrow, as well as different types of borrowing by nonprofits. The results indicate that nonprofit capital structure choices are best explained using the pecking order theory, in which internal funds are preferred over external borrowing. Further, nonprofit endowment is not found to increase leverage. Despite the unambiguous findings across varying definitions of leverage, the results also suggest that a “modified pecking order” is a more apt descriptor of nonprofit behavior.

Prior researchers have deployed the Vietnam-era draft lottery as an instrument to estimate causal effects of military service on health and earnings. However, household and residential outcomes may be more sensitive to the psychological effects of military service. Using 2SLS analyses of the 2000 Census and the 2005 American Community Survey, we find mixed results for residential stability, housing tenure, and extended family residence. While in the ACS white veterans are less mobile, veteran status has no effect on homeownership. Veteran status reduces extended family living for whites in the Census but increases it for ACS veterans of "other" races.

Few studies have adequately assessed the cost of transfers in public transport systems, or provided useful guidance on transfer improvements, such as where to invest (which facility), how to invest (which aspect), and how much to invest (quantitative justification of the investment). This paper proposes a new method based on path choice,3 taking into account both the operator's service supply and the customers' subjective perceptions to assess transfer cost and to identify ways to reduce it. This method evaluates different transfer components (e.g., transfer walking, waiting, and penalty) with distinct policy solutions and differentiates between transfer stations and movements.

The method is applied to one of the largest and most complex public transport systems in the world, the London Underground (LUL), with a focus on 17 major transfer stations and 303 transfer movements. This study confirms that transfers pose a significant cost to LUL, and that cost is distributed unevenly across stations and across platforms at a station.

Transfer stations are perceived very differently by passengers in terms of their overall cost and composition. The case study suggests that a better understanding of transfer behavior and improvements to the transfer experience could significantly benefit public transport systems.

Congestion pricing and land use planning have been proposed as two promising strategies to reduce the externalities associated with driving, including traffic congestion, air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. However, they are often viewed by their proponents as substitutive instead of complementary to each other. Using data from a pilot mileage fee program run in Portland, OR, we explored whether congestion pricing and land use planning were mutually supportive in terms of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reduction. We examined whether effective land use planning could reinforce the benefit of congestion pricing, and whether congestion pricing could strengthen the role of land use planning in encouraging travelers to reduce driving.

VMT data were collected over 10 months from 130 households, which were divided into two groups: those who paid a mileage charge with rates that varied by congestion level (i.e., congestion pricing) and those who paid a mileage charge with a flat structure. Using regression models to compare the two groups, we tested the effect of congestion pricing on VMT reduction across different land use patterns, and the effect of land use on VMT reduction with and without congestion pricing. With congestion pricing, the VMT reduction is greater in traditional (dense and mixed-use) neighborhoods than in suburban (single use, low-density) neighborhoods, probably because of the availability of travel alternatives in the former. Under the same land use pattern, land use attributes explain more variance of household VMT when congestion pricing is implemented, suggesting that this form of mileage fee could make land use planning a more effective mechanism to reduce VMT. In summary, land use planning and congestion pricing appear to be mutually supportive.

For policymakers considering mileage pricing, land use planning affects not only the economic viability but also the political feasibility of a pricing scheme. For urban planners, congestion pricing provides both opportunities and challenges to crafting land use policies that will reduce VMT. For example, a pricing zone that overlaps with dense, mixed-use and transit-accessible development, can reinforce the benefits of these development patterns and encourage greater behavioral changes.

Public and private decision-makers continue to seek risk-based approaches to allocate funds to help communities respond to disasters, accidents, and terrorist attacks involving critical infrastructure facilities. The requirements for emergency response capability depend both upon risks within a region's jurisdiction and mutual aid agreements that have been made with other regions. In general, regions in close proximity to infrastructure would benefit more from resources to improve preparedness because there is a greater potential for an event requiring emergency response to occur if there are more facilities at which such events could occur. Thus, a potentially important input into decisions about allocating funds for security is the proximity of a community to high concentrations of infrastructure systems that potentially could be at risk to an industrial accident, natural disaster, or terrorist attack. In this paper, we describe a methodology for measuring a region's exposure to infrastructure-related risks that captures both a community's concentration of facilities or sites considered to be vulnerable and of the proximity of these facilities to surrounding infrastructure systems. These measures are based on smoothing-based nonparametric probability density estimators, which are then used to estimate the probability of the entire infrastructure occurring within any specified distance of facilities in a county. The set of facilities used in the paper to illustrate the use of this methodology consists of facilities identified as vulnerable through the California Buffer Zone Protection Program. For infrastructure in surrounding areas we use dams judged to be high hazards, and BART tracks. The results show that the methodology provides information about patterns of critical infrastructure in regions that is relevant for decisions about how to allocate terrorism security and emergency preparedness resources.

On October 1, 2011, the maximum loan size eligible for Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insurance or a guarantee from Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac (known as "Government-Sponsored Enterprises" or "GSEs") dropped in dozens of metropolitan areas around the country. When this change took effect, a segment of the mortgage market in each of these areas instantly lost some or all federal backing. If enough borrowers seeking loans in this segment are unable to find financing, the result will be further downward pressure on the corresponding segment of the housing market. In this report, we use recent mortgage origination data to explore some of the possible implications of this policy change for the housing market and the U.S. mortgage finance system.

Balanced budget requirements (BBRs) affect all aspects of financial operations. Previous studies relied on characterizations that highlight a constitutional-statutory distinction. Hou and Smith (Public Budgeting & Finance 26(3):22–45, 2006) instead propose a political-technical construct. This article uses probit estimation, six measures of balance, and long panels to test which framework offers more explanatory power. The findings suggest that BBRs matter to varying degrees. Technical requirements exert bigger effects than political ones, the effects are more obvious on narrower than broader measures of balance and in the later phases of the budget cycle, and the political-technical construct offers more explanatory power than the constitutional-statutory distinction.

High-speed rail lines have been built and proposed in numerous countries throughout the world. The advantages of such lines are a higher quality of service than competing modes (air, bus, auto, conventional rail), potentially faster point-to-point times depending on specifiÂc locations, faster
loading and unloading times, higher safety than some modes, and lower labor costs. The disadvantage primarily lies in higher fixed costs, potentially higher energy costs than some competing modes, and higher noise externalities. Whether the net benefiÂts outweigh the net costs is an empirical question that awaits determination based on location specifiÂc factors, project costs, local demand, and network effects (depending on what else in the network exists). The optimal network design problem is hard (in the mathematical sense of hard, meaning optimal solutions are hard to fiÂnd because of the combinatorics of the possible different network configurations), so heuristics and human judgment are used to design networks.

Questions of how public organizations control and manage resources have been relegated to an insular subfield of contemporary public management. This is both unfortunate and unnatural because insights from the study of budgeting and financial management have traditionally been a driving force of public management's conceptual and empirical development. In this paper we seek to address this problem by reconnecting contemporary findings from the budgeting and financial management subfield to broader concerns in public management. We focus our discussion on the centrality of management technique in contemporary public management, and we argue that research in select areas of contemporary public budgeting and financial management has and will continue to illuminate the implications of reform and innovation in management technique, particularly in our current environment of amorphous institutional arrangements and diffuse, shared power.

On February 12th, 2008, Christine Quinn, Speaker of the New York City Council, took to the dais at the City Council Chambers to deliver the State of the City Address.  Towards the 17th page of an 18 page address, the Speaker’s remarks turned to public transit and the Mayor’s recently released PlaNYC initiatives.  While transit is generally a hot topic in New York, Mayor Bloomberg had made transportation a centerpiece of his second term and was spending the winter in a campaign to convince the State Legislature to approve a congestion pricing scheme in Manhattan to finance transportation capital projects. 

“It’s only natural to look at our natural highways, our water ways... to move New Yorkers efficiently and sustainably.” Said Speaker Quinn,  “That’s why we are proposing and the Mayor has agreed to begin developing a comprehensive five borough, year-round New York City Ferry System.”   The Speaker explained that the idea for ferry service originated through a series of public hearings she held with her colleagues in the Council:

 “Soon after, we began exploring the concept of a pilot ferry service for the Rockaways…got a commitment from the Mayor to fund it…and that service should be up and running by this summer.


Two years and twelve days later, the rhetoric of the State of the City speech came crashing to an anti-climactic end, as a report in the Daily News announced the cancellation of the Rockaways service.  The ferry would cease operations at the end of March.  

Plans for a five borough Ferry System have not materialized, except for an East River ferry serving developments along the Queens/Brooklyn waterfront, currently with two sailings during the AM and PM peak hours is expected to offer more frequent service next year  The Rockaway route had not met ridership projections and was recovering only 15-30% of its operational costs from revenues collected at the farebox.   The failure of the Rockaway ferry service, combined with the cancellation of another newly opened ferry service between Yonkers and Lower Manhattan in 2009 has dashed the hopes of some who wished to exploit New York’s water resources to improve commuting options via ferries.  This has led to questions about the feasibility of expanding ferry service in New York City more broadly. 

As large sections of the New York City waterfront are reclaimed from decades of industrial land use, idyllic waterfront parks have been developed next to gleaming residential towers.  It seems only natural that ferries will soon serve a role in transporting residents and visitors to these new neighborhoods throughout the City.  However, recent experiences illustrate the many obstacles facing expanded ferry services in New York City 

As budgetary commitments outpace current revenues and long-term liabilities balloon, the fiscal sustainability of state and local governments is a matter of mounting concern. Over the years, these governments have experimented with a wide variety of political and fiscal institutions, ranging from direct democracy to balanced budget rules, with the goal of slowing the growth of government and increasing financial responsibility. This article synthesizes the related empirical literature, summarizing what we know (and don’t know) about the effectiveness of various rules and procedures in promoting fiscal sustainability.

Health care policymakers have cited transportation barriers as key obstacles to providing health care to low-income suburbanites, particularly because suburbs have become home to a growing number of recent immigrants who are less likely to own cars than their neighbors. In a suburb of New York City, we conducted a pilot survey of low income, largely immigrant clients in four public clinics, to find out how much transportation difficulties limit their access to primary care. Clients were receptive to the opportunity to participate in the survey (response rate = 94%). Nearly one-quarter reported having transportation problems that had caused them to miss or reschedule a clinic appointment in the past. Difficulties included limited and unreliable local bus service, and a tenuous connection to a car. Our pilot work suggests that this population is willing to participate in a survey on this topic. Further, since even among those attending clinic there was significant evidence of past transportation problems, it suggests that a population based survey would yield information about substantial transportation barriers to health care.

Modern methods of fare collection have turned ticketing contracts into complicated information technology projects without necessary bringing all the disciplines of such systems. The high cost of updating or maintaining front line systems makes it very challenging to keep up with the rapid obsolescence cycles that the IT industry considers normal. It is challenging enough to build a system that offers some prospect of working. Wrapping these systems in long term, inflexible contracts with lenders and contractors opposed to making changes presents further challenges. London's experience with such a contract over the last decade offers some lessons for any transit system about to use a public private partnership (PPP) to build a ticketing system.

Budgeting is the core financial task in subnational governments. Although limited research has outlined the relationship between the annual operating budget and public pension funds, the existing literature has not considered the manner in which financial resources are measured within government budgets, how this measurement of resources might affect public budget decisions, and how the interaction of the budget with the actuarial model can lead public budget managers to engage in financially damaging transactions such as pension obligation bonds. This paper fills this void, and argues that the short-term nature of public budgeting coupled with the actuarial model's use of expected investment returns rather than a market discount rate for pension liability measurement causes governments to shift risk to future generations. This paper also recommends that a blended discount rate for pension liabilities be considered more appropriate when governments fund their annual pension expenditures using debt rather than equity (such as tax revenues).

The timing of this volume could not be more opportune. It is based on a 2007 conference to honor the work of Karl "Chip" Case, who is renowned for his scientific contributions to the economics of housing and public policy. The chapters analyze risk in the housing market, the regulation of housing markets by government, and other issues in U.S. housing policy. Chapters investigate derivative markets; the role that home equity insurance can play in reducing risk; the role that the regulation of government-sponsored enterprises has played in extending credit to home purchasers in low-income neighborhoods; and the growth in the market for subprime mortgages. The impact of local zoning regulations on housing prices and new construction is also considered. This is a must read during a time of restructuring our nation’s system of housing finance.

Reorganizing primary school grade spans is a tractable and relatively inexpensive school reform. However, assessing the effects of reorganization requires also examining other organizational changes that may accompany grade span reforms. Using data on New York City public schools from 1996 to 2002 and exploiting within-school variations, we examine relationships among grade span, spending, and size. We find that school grade span is associated with differences in school size, class size, and grade size, though generally not with spending and other resources. In addition, we find class size and grade size differences in the same grade level at schools with different configurations, suggesting that school grade span affects not only school size but also class size and grade size. We find few relationships, though, between grade span and school-level performance, pointing to the need to augment these analyses with pupil-level data. We conclude with implications for research and practice.

High school reform is currently at the top of the education policy making agenda after years of stagnant achievement and persistent racial and income test score gaps. Although a number of reforms offer some promise of improving U.S. high schools, small schools have emerged as the favored reform model, especially in urban areas, garnering substantial financial investments from both the private and public sectors. In the decade following 1993, the number of high schools in New York City nearly doubled, as new "small" schools opened and large high schools were reorganized into smaller learning communities. The promise of small schools to improve academic engagement, school culture, and, ultimately, student performance has drawn many supporters. However, educators, policy makers, and researchers have raised concerns about the unintended consequences of these new small schools and the possibility that students "left behind" in large, established high schools are incurring negative impacts.

High school reform is currently at the top of the education policy making agenda after years of stagnant achievement and persistent racial and income test score gaps. Although a number of reforms offer some promise of improving U.S. high schools, small schools have emerged as the favored reform model, especially in urban areas, garnering substantial financial investments from both the private and public sectors. In the decade following 1993, the number of high schools in New York City nearly doubled, as new "small" schools opened and large high schools were reorganized into smaller learning communities. The promise of small schools to improve academic engagement, school culture, and, ultimately, student performance has drawn many supporters. However, educators, policy makers, and researchers have raised concerns about the unintended consequences of these new small schools and the possibility that students "left behind" in large, established high schools are incurring negative impacts.

Using 10 years (1993-2003) of data on New York City high schools, we examine the potential systemic effects of small schools that have been identified by critics and researchers.

General editor Haider-Markel (U. of Kansas) presents a two-volume encyclopedia intended to serve as a first-stop reference on state politics in the United States, which also includes some coverage of US overseas territories and Puerto Rico. The encyclopedia opens with four broad topical essays on the evolution and impact of state constitutions, the impact of direct democracy (voter initiatives and the like), cooperation between the states, and states as policy testing grounds. It then presents individual state profiles, about ten pages each, that are uniformly structured to allow comparison of state history, the political environment, elections and voting behavior, the legislative branch, the executive branch, the judicial branch, intergovernmental relations, state-tribal relations (where applicable), and long-term issues and policy trends. The state entries also include bibliographies; charts showing partisan distribution of presidential elections from 1988 to 2004; and data tables on political history, political environment, elections and voting behavior, the legislative branch, the executive branch, and the judicial branch. Also included are some 175 A-to-Z topical entries discussing general concepts related to governmental functions and procedures, government structures and bodies, political theory, and political behavior. Examples of specific topics would include gerrymandering, impeachment, public health, auditor, bicameralism, legislative leadership, common law, judicial review, and social welfare. Finally, statistical data on populations, economics, finance, the environment, government spending, voting, and campaign fundraising is presented for all 50 states, followed by a comprehensive index.

Using an 11-year panel data set containing information on revenues, expenditures, and demographics for every school district in the United States, we examine the effects of state-adopted school accountability systems on the adequacy and equity of school resources. We find little relationship between state implementation of accountability systems and changes in school finance equity, though we do find evidence that states in which courts overturned the school finance system during the decade exhibited significant equity improvements. Additionally, while implementation of accountability per se does not appear linked to changes in resource adequacy, states that implemented strong accountability systems did experience improvements.

This paper studies the effect of state-level banking regulation on financial development and on components of state-level growth in the United States from 1900 to 1940. We use these banking laws to assess the findings of a large recent literature that has argued that financial development contributes to economic growth. We contend that the institutional mechanism leading to financial development is important in determining its consequences and that some types of financial development can even retard economic growth.

For the United States from 1900 to 1940, we argue that the financial expansion induced by expanded bank branching accelerated the mechanization of agriculture and spurred growth in manufacturing. In contrast, financial expansions induced by state deposit insurance had negative consequences for both the agricultural and manufacturing sectors.

Purpose – The paper explores an emerging challenge for large public-sector bureaucracies: developing information and performance measurement systems that support anti-corruption efforts.
Design – An analytical framework linking functions and contexts of performance measurement to anti-corruption requirements is presented. The framework is used to explore a case study of the World Bank’s ongoing efforts to strengthen anti-corruption information systems in Indonesia.
Findings – A range of organizations are increasingly turning to performance measurement systems to fulfill several functions related to organizational integrity: to hold organization’s accountable for reaching publicly stated standards of fiduciary responsibility and corruption control; to identify vulnerable operational points in multi-faceted public enterprises; and to facilitate organizational learning regarding ‘what works’. Yet corruption is difficult to measure, and corruption vulnerabilities often arise from informal practices, insufficient incentives for enforcement or adherence to standards, and managerial blindspots. Enhanced information systems need to be coupled with effective and multi-directional accountability arrangements in order for performance measurement to contribute effectively to corruption control.
Practical implications – Improved information systems and a reassessment of managerial incentives and attitudes are both essential in order to reduce organizational vulnerability to corruption and to the public backlash that follows in the wake of corruption scandals.
Originality/value – Focus on an emerging area of performance management likely to gain increasing visibility as large bureaucracies attempt to institutionalize public commitments to high anti-corruption standards

Public charter schools are one of the fastest growing education reforms in the US, currently serving more than a million students. Though the movement for greater school choice is widespread, its implementation has been uneven. State laws differ greatly in the degree of latitude granted charter schools, and-holding constant state support-states and localities vary widely in the availability of and enrollment in these schools. In this paper, we use a panel of demographic, financial, and school performance data to examine the support for charters at the state and local levels. Results suggest that growing population heterogeneity and income inequality-in addition to persistently low student outcomes-are associated with greater support for charter schools. Teachers unions have been particularly effective in slowing or preventing liberal state charter legislation; however, conditional on law passage and strength, local participation in charter schools rises with the share of unionized teachers.

The New York City Affairs Committee (the "Committee") of the New York City Bar Association (the "Association") conducted an extensive review of the financing by New York City ("City") of the development of the Hudson Rail Yards, a 45-block area on the far west side of Manhattan adjacent to the mid-Manhattan central business district. The Committee focused on the historical and fiscal ramifications of the financing and its incentive structures which can be fairly characterized as creative and unusual. The Association's review is intended to provoke discussion about the means of financing infrastructure in New York City.

Public authorities play a major role in delivering public services. They supplement direct government agencies in three ways:

• Provide a business-like organizational structure for public services that are financed primarily by user fees and whose capital investments are self-financed through bonds supported by user fees.
• Provide a stewardship for major capital assets and make long-run investment decisions with some isolation from pressures of the electoral cycle.
• Provide a mechanism for taking advantage of federal tax benefits for economic development and other purposes that otherwise would be treated as private activities.

Authorities are intended to strike a balance between political accountability and political independence. Unlike heads of direct government agencies, governing boards of authorities are expected to be more independent of those who appoint them, to make difficult and unpopular decisions outside the arena of elected politics, and to be accountable to the public indirectly through reporting, transparency in decision-making and long-run performance. New York State makes extensive use of public authorities.

Substantial national attention is being directed at enhancing the competency levels of early careerists in healthcare management. In this study, we examined preceptors' ratings of administrative resident/fellow competencies in multiple domains, and we compared those to our previous results of self-rated competency by residents/fellows. In this national sample of preceptors (n=61) of administrative residency/fellowship program listed with the American College of Healthcare Executives, competency in the information management domain was ranked highest, with more than half of preceptors (55.7%) giving their residents/fellows an "A" rating. Fewer preceptors (between 30.0% and 39.2%) gave their residents/fellows an "A" rating in domains of interpersonal and emotional intelligence, analytic and conceptual reasoning, and clinical operations. Less than 20% of preceptors rated competencies as "A" level in the domains of human resources/marketing/public affairs, financial management, fund raising, and facilities management. There were significant differences in preceptor ratings compared with resident/fellow self-ratings, with preceptors often providing lower ratings than provided by resident/fellows. The findings highlight the need not only to enhance competency levels of graduates but also to address the potential mismatch in early careerists' and preceptors' views about required and attained competency levels.

Studies of state fiscal and budgetary policies often use balanced budget requirements (BBRs) as explanatory variables. While current measures laid the crucial groundwork for a basic understanding of state BBRs, their lack of comprehensiveness threatens the validity of empirical work. Based on comprehensive legal research, this article offers a framework for analyzing state requirements: each state's BBRs form a coherent system for achieving budget balance through budget cycles; a fully developed BBR system offers a three-line construct against imbalance; and the more complete, developed, and explicit a BBR system is, the more stringent it will be in achieving budgetary balance.

Fiscal transparency and citizen participation in budgeting processes are widely promoted as means toward the ends of democratic accountability and responsiveness in the allocation and use of public funds. In the past decade, academics and practitioners enthusiastic about e-government have emphasized the potential for using information technology to enhance democratic governance. Putting these two streams of public administration theory and practice together, the authors developed criteria for assessing e-budgeting efforts and applied them to a sample of Web sites operated by state and local governments. Although practitioners are ahead of academics in exploring the potential of e-government for improving fiscal accountability and responsiveness, practice lags behind the relevant basic recommendations of the Government Finance Officers Association. This finding leads to research and practice agendas aimed at enhancing the use of e-government to enhance fiscal transparency and participation.

In France, American nostrums of unleashing market forces under the banner of "consumer-directed health care," and selective contracting by private health insurers, have gained little ground. That should not, however, lead one to conclude that the French health care system is irrelevant to the United States. The organization and financing of health care, in France, resembles, in many respects, that of the United States - more so, in fact, than do Britain's National Health Service or Canadian and German national health insurance (NHI). The French reliance on a public-private mix that includes a significant proprietary hospital sector, private fee-for-service medical practice, and enormous patient choice among a pluralistic organization of health care providers makes French NHI a model for what Senator Ted Kennedy and Congressman Pete Stark have called "Medicare for all."

Public schools across the United States are educating an increasing number and diversity of immigrant students. Unfortunately, little is known about their performance relative to native-born students and the extent to which the "nativity gap" might be explained by school and demographic characteristics. This article takes a step toward filling that void using data from New York City where 17 percent of elementary and middle school students are immigrants. We explore disparities in performance between foreign-born and native-born students on reading and math tests in three ways�using levels (unadjusted scores), "value-added" scores (adjusted for prior performance), and an education production function. While unadjusted levels and value-added measures often indicate superior performance among immigrants, disparities are substantially explained by student and school characteristics. Further, while the nativity gap differs for students from different world regions, disparities are considerably diminished in fully specified models. We conclude with implications for urban schools in the United States.

This is one of the only books available that addresses financial and managerial accounting within the framework of the three major areas of the public sector. Clear and comprehensive, Finkler's unique and accessible text provides the fundamentals of financial management for those who lack a financial background so that readers can access and apply financial information more effectively. Details the many aspects of strategic and budgetary planning. Outlines the processes involved in implementing and controlling results. Features aspects of accounting unique for Health Care, not-for-profit organizations and state and local governments. Explains balance sheets, operating and cash flow statements. Provides basic foundation for financial analysis. For managers and policy-makers in public service organizations who want to make more efficient use of their organization's financial information.

Health services research is, by nature, multidisciplinary, for it draws on the methods,concepts and theories of social sciences, which are relevant to the study of how the organization and financing of health services can improve the delivery of health care services (Gray, et al., 2003). While medicine and public health, too, are multidisciplinary enterprises drawing on such disciplines as molecular biology, physiology, anatomy, genetics, epidemiology and more, health services research departs from these disciplines in focusing not on the nature of disease and health but rather on the financing and organization of health systems.

So it is with urban health services research albeit that this field is more narrowly focused on health services in cities. The city focus has resulted in a large body of research on vulnerable groups, barriers to service access, public health clinics and community health centers. Likewise, it has led to important investigations of safetynet institutions, e.g. public hospitals and health centers, which serve a disproportionate share of uninsured and low-income patients. In addition, urban health services research has focused on a host of specific services associated with subpopulations suffering from TB, HIV/AIDS, drug addiction and other social pathologies that are typically associated with the "inner city."

The attack on the World Trade Center reinforced a process of change in lower Manhattan that had been under way for at least the past fifty years. The public and private responses to the destruction wrought on September 11 have provided the funds, organizational capacity, and public commitment to do what a previous generation of municipal planners tried to accomplish, with only partial success: creating a mixed residential and office community in what was once New York City's dominant financial and business district. Federal aid to rebuild lower Manhattan has been the catalyst for modernizing and expanding its mass transit systems and facilities, providing low-cost financing for converting obsolete office buildings into housing, improving pedestrian movement, investing public funds in parks and cultural institutions, and subsidizing the creation of new public schools. This chapter examines the key public and private organizations that have shaped this redevelopment and the implications for the future of lower Manhattan and for office development in the rest of New York City.

The plight of urban schools and their failure to adequately and efficiently educate their students has occupied the national discussion about public schools in America over the last quarter century. While there is little doubt that failing schools exist in rural and suburban locations, the image of city school systems as under-financed, inefficient, inequitable and burdened by students with overwhelming needs is particularly well entrenched in the modern American psyche. As the largest school district in the country, New York City attracts particular attention to its problems. To some extent, this image reflects realities. New York City school children, like many urban students around the country, are more likely to be poor, non-white and immigrants, with limited English skills, and greater instability in their schooling, and the new waves of immigrants from around the world bring students with a formidable array of backgrounds, language skills, and special needs. The resulting changes in the student body pose particular challenges for schools. At the same time, despite a decade of school finance litigation and reform, New York continues to have trouble affording the class sizes, highly qualified teachers and other resources that suburban neighbors enjoy. Finally, there is evidence of continuing segregation and disparities in performance between students of different races and ethnicities.

Contains papers by state education dept. policymakers, analysts, & data providers on emerging issues in school finance. Includes: estimates of disparities & analysis of the causes of expenditures in public school districts; race, poverty & the student curriculum; court-ordered school finance equalization; resource allocation to schools under conditions of radical decentralization; building equity & effectiveness into school-based funding models; alternative options for deflating education expenditures over time; productivity collapse in schools; & evaluating the effect of teacher degree level on educational performance.

Although analyses of state school finance systems rarely focus on the distribution of funds to students of different races, the advent of racial discrimination as an issue in school finance court cases may change that situation. In this article, we describe the background, analyses, and results of plaintiffs' testimony regarding racial discrimination in Campaign for Fiscal Equity Inc. v. State of New York. Plaintiffs employed multiple regression and public finance literature to show that New York State's school finance system had a disparate racial impact on New York City students. We review the legal basis for disparate racial impact claims, with particular emphasis on the role of quantitative statistical work, and then describe the model we developed and estimated for the court case. Finally, we discuss the defendants' rebuttal, the Court's decision, and conclude with observations about the role of analysis in judicial decision making in school finance.

The State of New York faces a major challenge stemming from a 2003 ruling by the Court of Appeals, the State's highest court. It found that the more than one million children in New York City's public schools were not provided with the sound basic education guaranteed to them by the State Constitution. In the subsequent months, the plaintiffs and the State's political leaders have not agreed on a suitable remedy for students in New York City, and by extension to hundreds of thousands of additional students in other school districts around the state who also have been denied their constitutional right. One important issue to be resolved is: How much additional funding is needed?

The Citizens Budget Commission (CBC) has prepared this report to address two questions fundamental to designing a remedy:

- Where should the money come from?
- What changes other than more money are essential to improving educational
outcomes?

In a festschrift to Netzer-a public finance economist well known for his research on state and local taxation, urban public services, and nonprofit organizations-eight chapters apply microeconomics to problems facing urban areas and use statistical analysis to gain insight into practical solutions. The essays look at alternative methods of financing urban government, such as a land value tax and the impact of sales and income taxes on property taxation; at government expenditures, including housing subsidies; and at subsidies to nonprofit arts groups as well as the role of the nonprofit sector in providing K-12 education. Of interest to the fields of public finance, urban economics, and public administration.

In a festschrift to Netzer a public finance economist well known for his research on state and local taxation, urban public services, and nonprofit organizations eight chapters apply microeconomics to problems facing urban areas and use statistical analysis to gain insight into practical solutions. The essays look at alternative methods of financing urban government, such as a land value tax and the impact of sales and income taxes on property taxation; at government expenditures, including housing subsidies; and at subsidies to nonprofit arts groups as well as the role of the nonprofit sector in providing K-12 education. Of interest to the fields of public finance, urban economics, and public administration.

Indonesia is currently facing some severe challenges, both in political affairs and in economic management. One of these challenges is the recently enacted decentralization program, now well underway, which promises to have some wide-ranging consequences. This edited volume presents original papers, written by a select group of widely recognized and distinguished scholars, that take a hard, objective look at the many effects of decentralization on economic and political issues in Indonesia. There are many questions about this program: how will it be implemented, is there capacity at the local level to implement its reforms, is there sufficient local political accountability to make it work, and how will the decentralization affect the broader program of economic growth and stabilization? Topics covered include: the historical and political dimensions of decentralization, its macroeconomic effects, its effects on poverty alleviation, the assignment of expenditure and revenue functions across levels of government, the design of transfers, the role of natural resource taxation and the effects of local government borrowing. An authoritative, comprehensive collection, Reforming Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations and the Rebuilding of Indonesia will be of interest to economists and policy makers as well as students of public finance, development, and Asian economics.

Among the principal targets of criticism in recent American politics has been the alleged corruption, inequity, overall cost, and regulatory complexity of the U.S. campaign-finance system. Scholarship has not borne out any of these criticisms, and, if anything, empirical investigation suggests that the current system does a fair job in addressing�as much as this is possible under modern conditions�the problem of public ignorance in mass democracies.

Public confidence is essential to America's 1.5 million charitable organizations and the 11 million Americans they employ. Confidence clearly affects the public's willingness to donate time and money, shapes the political and regulatory environment that governs charitable organizations, and has at least some influence on morale within the charitable workforce. Confidence slipped when charities were slow to respond after 9/11, and it has been battered in the past year by scandals. The news media have delved into lavish spending at some of the nation's leading philanthropies, improper payments at the United Way of the National Capitol Area, conflicts of interest at the Nature Conservancy, and the firing of new YWCA president and feminist leader Patricia Ireland after just six months on the job. In turn, these stories have sparked legislative investigations and calls for tighter regulation, most recently from the California State Attorney General, who joined his colleagues in Minnesota and New York in calling for a new era in charitable accountability and the legislation to create it. Where the media go, Congress, state attorneys
general, and watchdog groups are sure to follow.

Reorganization offers a significant opportunity to align agencies by mission rather than constituencies. If done well it can strengthen accountability, reduce wasteful duplication and overlap, tighten administrative efficiency, improve employee motivation, and provide the kind of integration that leads to impact. The question before this Committee today is not whether reorganization can provide needed improvements in government performance, however, but whether Congress should give the President of the United States reorganization authority of some kind. Light believes the answer is absolutely yes, particularly if granted through the expedited model envisioned by the National Commission on the Public Service chaired by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul
Volcker.

This comprehensive volume of essays by respected scholars in economics and public finance explores the connections among the property tax, land use and regulation. The authors examine the idea that the property tax is used as a partial substitute for land use regulation and other policies designed to affect how land is utilized. Like many economists, the contributors see some type of property taxation as a more efficient means of helping to shape land use. Some of the essays analyze a conventional property tax, while others consider radically different systems of property taxation.

Following an introduction by the book's editor Dick Netzer, the first paper sets the stage by modeling taxes on land and buildings in the context of a dynamic model of real estate markets. The remaining papers examine how various tax mechanisms and non-tax alternatives to regulating and determining land use, such as zoning and private neighborhood associations, complement or substitute for one another. Urban planners and economists interested in local public finance will welcome this wide-ranging review and analysis.

Dick Netzer, a leading public finance economist specializing in state and local issues and urban government, is professor emeritus of economics and public administration at the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York University. He organized a conference sponsored by the Lincoln Institute in Scottsdale, Arizona, in January 2002 and edited the papers presented at that conference for this volume.

Examining cutting-edge issues of international relevance in the ongoing redesign of the South African local government fiscal system, the contributors to this volume analyze the major changes that have taken place since the demise of apartheid. The 1996 Constitution and subsequent legislation dramatically redefined the public sector, mandating the development of democratic local governments empowered to provide a wide variety of key public services. However, the definition and implementation of new local functions and the supporting democratic decision-making and managerial capabilities are emerging more slowly than expected. Some difficult choices and challenges commonly faced by developing countries must be dealt with before the system can evolve to more effectively meet the substantial role envisioned for local governments.

Discusses the challenges posed by incorporating Statement No. 34 of the U.S. Governmental Accounting Standards Board, Basic Financial Statements-and Management's Discussion and Analysis-for State and Local Governments (GASB 34) in the core curriculum of a school. Generally accepted accounting principles and GASB 34; Pedagogical issues in GASB 34; Dynamism in learning governmental accounting.

Intergovernmental transfers are an important tool of public sector finance in both industrialized and developing countries. Critically examining selected intergovernmental transfers in three large Asian countries-India, Pakistan, and the Philippines-this study highlights lessons from these countries that those intending to reform their intergovernmental transfer systems might apply. Each country is considered in light of the accepted principles and international practices of intergovernmental transfers. A summary is provided that synthesizes the results from case studies, examining how they meet individual country objectives and how they relate to broader international experience.

This report recommends a comprehensive reassessment of federal health policies, programs, and processes, including federal-state roles and relationships, and some immediate actions to promote and protect the nation's health and to provide leadership in world health. The report concentrates on the challenges facing the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) as the head of the lead health agency in the federal government. The federal government is responsible for five main functions related to health policy: financing; public health protection; collecting and disseminating information about U.S. health and health care delivery systems; capacity building for population health; and direct management of services.

Unlike the current categorical, or highly specialized, approach leading to policies and programs addressing the needs of a specific population, illness, or organizational constituency, a new, comprehensive approach to policy for the 21st century should promote coordinated efforts across programs in order to achieve three goals:

* create conditions that lead to longer, healthier lives for all Americans;
* eliminate health disparities;
* protect communities from avoidable health hazards and help them to address their own health problems.

The federal government has a large backlog of office and other space needs. Some policymakers argue that more sharing of courtrooms by federal judges would lower courthouse construction costs and free resources for other purposes. Others worry that sharing of courtrooms would increase trial delays and other costs. Decision makers employ a variety of techniques to better understand and to help guide decisions about issues like courtroom sharing. This analysis applies one such technique to simulate the flow of trials through a federal court system and to assess the impact on trial delays of providing less then one courtroom per judge. The preliminary findings suggest no significant impact.

One of the few books that addresses financial and managerial accounting within the three major areas of the public sector � government, health, and not-for-profit�the Second Edition provides the fundamentals of financial management for those pursuing careers within these fields. With a unique presentation that explains the rules specific to the public sector, this book outlines the framework for readers to access and apply financial information more effectively. Employing an engaging and user-friendly approach, this book clearly defines essential vocabulary, concepts, methods, and basic tools of financial management and financial analysis that are imperative to achieving success in the field. This book is intended for financial managers and general managers who are required to obtain, understand, and use accounting information to improve the financial results of their organizations, specifically within the areas of government or public policy and management, not-for-profit management, and health policy and management.

The property tax is considered a most unpopular tax, among both scholars and taxpayers. Yet, recent research and analysis has proposed at least a partial rehabilitation of this tax and its role in the arena of local public finance. Based on a conference sponsored by the Lincoln Institute in January 2000, this book presents a systematic and comprehensive review of the economics of local property taxation and examines its policy implications. The ten papers and paired commentaries are written in a nontechnical form to make the findings available to a broad audience of policy makers and other noneconomists.

Approximately 3.1 million State residents (one of every six New Yorkers) have no health insurance. This report describes the uninsured population in New York State and the public programs that currently finance medical care for the uninsured. It also identifies the inadequacies of these programs and makes recommendations for reform.

In recent years, developing countries under fiscal pressure have increasing recognized significant weaknesses in their intergovernmental mechanisms for financing local infrastructure. Many countries are in the process of rationalizing poorly coordinated and subjectively allocated grant systems as well as loans. Such efforts, however, are typically undertaken independently of each other, often providing conflicting incentives for local fiscal behavior. I argue that the reform of grant and loan mechanisms should be explicitly linked to improve the overall effectiveness of the infrastructure finance system. The potential complications involved in designing grant-loan linkages, however, are considerable. I illustrate some key issues by examining the water sector in Indonesia, concluding with suggestions for how to think about creating such linkages in other sectors and countries.

Public service organizations are looking for ways to improve the evaluation of performance and resource allocation. One of the approaches is to use adjusted performance measures, which attempt to Capture factors that affect the organizational performance but are outside of the organization's control. This article illustrates the construction and use of adjusted performance measures to assess the performance of public schools, and reports findings from a study of school-based budgeting in Chicago that relates adjusted performance measures and patterns of budget allocations.

Examines the provision of police and education services using a new method of indexing quantities of local public services that isolates movements in shadow prices and quantities in expenditure data. Effects of public services on public characteristics; Link between expenditures between 1982 and 1983 and quantities of education and in prices of public services.

Discusses the use of grants-in-aid to reduce fiscal disparities by local governments in the United States. Method used in Massachusetts to account for differences among communities in fiscal costs and resources; Indepth look at expenditure determination in tax limitations; Estimation of local government expenditures.

Investigates the impact of social science research on school finance policy in the U.S. Formulation of social science research to public policy; Perspectives in evaluating the policy impact of social science research; Strengths of the perspectives.