Course Syllabus

Course Instructor: Temirlan T. Moldogaziev, Ph.D.

Class Meeting Time & Location: Tuesdays/Thursdays @ 12:45-14:00 in PV 273

Course Materials: Posted on Canvas

Course Description: Public Budgeting is a graduate level public sector budgeting theory & practice seminar specifically designed for doctorate (and select, exceptional MPA/MPP) students specializing in public budgeting & finance. The course introduces students to fundamental functions of public sector budgets, relevant concepts and their properties, theories that explain the antecedents, processes, behaviors, and outcomes of public budgeting, empirical studies that test budgeting theories, and implications that empirical evidence offers to budgetary theory and practice. The course also introduces students to elements of public expenditure data collection, univariate and multivariate inferential research that informs policy and practice through evidence-based and data-driven analysis and develops skills to effectively and efficiently communicate empirical findings to key stakeholders.

The course requires a persistent and consistent effort from all students to: 1) complete weekly readings and critiques in time; 2) engage in data collection, analysis and collaboration with peers; 3) craft a final research paper and presentation, consisting of an independent literature review of existing theoretical and empirical scholarly work or an inferential evaluation of important relationships involving public expenditures (where public expenditures serve both as an outcome and/or an explanatory variable).   

The course will start with an introduction to public sector budget functions, structures, and processes. This is followed by the history of public budgeting in the US and the seminal theoretical articles regarding public sector budgeting. We then evaluate the core dynamics in federal, state & local, and intergovernmental budget decisions. Finally, we assess the roles of politics, bureaucracy, economy, time horizons, reforms, as well as special public sector concerns such as performance or fiscal sustainability. Relationships going in the other direction (i.e., from public expenditures to political, organizational, economic, and other societal phenomena and processes) are also assessed throughout the semester.

Learning Outcomes: By the end of this course, a) students will master the concepts and theories used in public sector budgeting; b) students will come to understand the budgetary functions & processes and recognize the roles of budgetary stakeholders; c) students will come to understand current and historical issues/challenges in public budgeting; d) students will have the skills to generate important research and policy questions, describe key relationships using relevant theoretical frameworks, and build testable hypotheses from these frameworks; e) students will have the skills to generate and communicate relevant evidence-based solutions to policy researchers and practitioners.