An Empirical Framework for Public Finance and Financial Management

• Author: Daniel L. Smith
• Date: 01 November 2012
• Published date: 01 November 2012
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6210.2012.02650.x

934 Public Administration Review • November | December 2012

Rebecca M. Hendrick, Managing the Fiscal Metro-

polis:  e Financial Policies, Practices, and Health

of Suburban Municipalities (Washington, DC:

Georgetown University Press, 2011). 320 pp. $34.95

(paper), ISBN: 9781589017764; $19.22 (eBook),

ISBN: 9781589017900.

The most important questions in public f‌i nance

and f‌i nancial management have given birth to

large bodies of scholarly literature. At the same

time, there exist well-known textbooks that present

students and practitioners with the essential “tools of

the trade” for practice in public f‌i nance and f‌i nancial

management. Rebecca M. Hendrick’s Managing the

Fiscal Metropolis takes on the extraordinary task of

integrating and extending several bodies of literature

on local government f‌i nance and f‌i nancial manage-

ment and, in doing so, provides both scholars and

applied analysts with the essential tools of the trade for

empirical research in public f‌i nance and f‌i nancial man-

agement.  e book’s uniquely thorough investigation

of a large sample of suburban local governments in the

Chicago metropolitan area makes good on its promise

to detail the f‌i nancial policies, practices, and health of

suburban municipalities. While many of the empirical

f‌i ndings in the book do not represent surprising new

discoveries per se, the totality and nuance of the

frameworks and evidence that Hendricks presents in

answering four mega-questions of public f‌i nance and

f‌i nancial management make this book a very impor-

tant original contribution. It of‌f ers a clear and coher-

ent framework for future empirical research in all areas

of public f‌i nance and f‌i nancial management.

 e book launches from the observation that while

their motives vary, all elected of‌f‌i cials and public

managers desire to enhance, or at least maintain, their

jurisdictions’ f‌i nancial health. At the same time, how-

ever, they often act against their own f‌i nancial

objectives. From political fragmentation, to inad-

equate f‌i scal institutions, to ignorance of structural

budgetary and economic def‌i ciencies, the introduction

surveys the root causes of local government f‌i scal cri-

ses that have been identif‌i ed in prior studies. To know

these root causes still leaves many important questions

that are not addressed by the extant literature, Hen-

drick argues, and the goal of the remaining chapters

is to systematically f‌i ll these gaps. In the investigation,

Hendrick employs a comprehensive panel data set

from the state of Illinois and the U.S. Census Bureau

An Empirical Framework for Public Finance

and Financial Management

Sonia M. Ospina and Rogan Kersh, Editors

Daniel L. Smith

New York University

Daniel L. Smith is assistant professor

of public budgeting and f‌i nancial manage-

ment in the Robert F. Wagner Graduate

School of Public Service at New York

University. His research focuses on state

government budgeting and f‌i nancial man-

agement and has appeared in the

Journal

of Public Administration Research and

Theory, Public Administration Review,

and

Public Budgeting & Finance.

He is coauthor

of

Financial Management for Public, Health,

and Not-for-Prof‌i t Organizations

(4th ed.,

Prentice Hall/Pearson, 2013).

E-mail: daniel.smith@nyu.edu

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 72, Iss. 6, pp. 934–937. © 2012 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.111/j.1540-6210.2012.02650.x.