Paying for Government through Cost Recovery

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is a non-partisan, independent office serving the United States Congress through monitoring, research, and projections for the future. They take particular interest in the nation’s financial picture. GAO engaged a previous NYU Wagner Capstone team to quantify user charge’s budget share from 1997-2004. In addition to this quantitative analysis, GAO wished to conduct a qualitative analysis on the user charges design, structure, and impact on policy. The current Capstone team reviewed the literature on user charges and also on particular user charge programs, including international practices. This was followed by an analysis of the current status of several federal user charges. The details of particular programs were synthesized into concise case studies that illustrate the analysis. The team concluded that user charges have three key impacts on government activity, namely improve economic efficiency, recover costs or improve management performance.