During recessions, the newspapers are filled with stories of the pain caused by state and local budget cuts: slashed mental health funding, reductions in school meals, further delays in long-overdue infrastructure maintenance and replacement, and new taxes. During booms, they are filled stories...

This article shows how to design and organize the delivery of public services to promote the kinds of co-productive behavior needed to make public efforts effective. Second, it specifies human-resource management practices that foster an inclination on the part of public employees to encourage...

The efficacy of alternative institutional arrangements depends upon the information costs that obtain under each. The information revolution has dramatically transformed information costs and, therefore, the optimal placement of the boundary between government, non-governmental organizations,...

Ineffective controllership is, perhaps, the most common managerial failure found in the public sector. This failure affects outcomes and achievements in every area of public policy - often profoundly. Controllers design and operate management-control systems. The effectiveness of alternative...

Alternative models of regulatory decision making/legislative choice are presented and evaluated. A limited rationality model oriented to the common good is proposed as more complete and no less accurate than any of the more cynical alternatives. The implication of this model is that many...

The problems caused by state and local revenue volatility are inherently challenging. The State of Oregon has an especially volatile revenue structure, which can cause all sorts of problems as the state moves through the business cycle. Nevertheless, we have concluded that these problems are...

We describe the evolution of Oregon’s one-off property tax system, which emphasizes stable growth in tax payments and inter-jurisdictional uniformity in tax rates. We contrast its outcomes in two sections of Portland, which had the best, most fairly administered property tax system in the...

This article uses simple and self-contained optimal control theory and martingale methods to find optimal government expenditure consistent with present value balance and, implicitly sustainable saving, borrowing, and tax levels as well, since long-term sustainable paths are, in principle, not...

Oregon has one of the biggest cyclical budget problems in the country, if not the biggest. Without a rainy day fund, Oregon's state government would have a budget shortfall ten years out of twenty; two of which would be equal to or greater than twenty percent of annual spending. Oregon could...

A good tax system must raise sufficient revenue – and do so fairly, efficiently, transparently, and coherently. How do the tax systems of the states stack up in terms of fairness, adequacy, and neutrality? To answer this question, we assess each state’s relative performance in terms of...