In recent years, scholars have developed new analytical tools and financial instruments that could help governments cope more effectively with financial volatility. In this essay we show how states can achieve fiscal sustainability using financial instruments based upon mean-variance analysis:...

Budget policymakers should focus on expected revenue growth (average growth over history) and on the risk or volatility around that average. It makes sense to think about this risk as having two components purely random risk unrelated to the economy and risk associated with an economy that is...

Accurately predicting revenue growth is nearly impossible. Predicting the peaks and valleys of the business cycle is even more hopeless. This matters because tax revenues are largely driven by economic growth. Volatile, unpredictable revenue growth causes all sorts of unpleasant responses on the...

Private enterprises should be concerned with maximizing productivity. Government should be concerned with minimizing risk, perhaps subject to a cost or productivity constraint. Value creation in government ought to strive for consistency, coherency, and transparency. Achieving consistency and...

Minimum wage hikes express our sympathy for the working poor and our solidarity with them. But their importance is largely symbolic. The net effects of moderate increases in wage floors are vanishingly small. Statutory wage minimums work like taxes on labor, with their proceeds paid directly to...

This article evaluates two alternative standards for resetting property assessments on title transfer in property tax systems like Oregon's and California's, which are explicitly designed to protect property owners against rapid, unanticipated increases in their tax bills: California's reset to...

We find that, for many categories of taxes, states that have upgraded their tax-processing systems see statistically and economically significant increases in collections relative to states that have not. Specifically, we detect positive impacts for amusement taxes, tobacco taxes, motor vehicle...

Quantitative public financial management research is limited by the absence of a common database for empirical analysis (Gill and Meier 2000). While the U.S. Census Bureau distributes government finance data that some scholars have utilized, the arduous process of collecting, interpreting, and...

A lot of people agree about what needs to be done to fix Oregon's state finances, the real question is how? The surprising answer is that there is a fairly simple, cheap solution. The first step is to take the sales tax off the table. The second step is to take very seriously the proposal put...