Product Description

Ever wonder how federal finance really works? FISCAL ADMINISTRATION shows you how public budgets operate and lets you crunch the numbers yourself. And with the latest data from the US federal budget, including its breakdown, you can see for yourself how policymakers allocate money. Plus, each chapter includes stories for discussion from the private sector as well as from public finance. Run the numbers and debate the financial policies with FISCAL ADMINISTRATION.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #42390 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 704 pages

About the Author
John Mikesell is professor of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University and director of the Master of Public Affairs program for the School of Public and Environmental Affairs. He is editor-in-chief of PUBLIC BUDGETING AND FINANCE, the journal published by the American Association for Budget and Program Analysis and the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management, and his column on sales taxation is a regular feature of STATE TAX NOTES. Mikesell has worked as consultant on World Bank missions to the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan. He is coauthor with John F. Due of SALES TAXATION, STATE AND LOCAL STRUCTURE AND ADMINISTRATION (Urban Institute Press). His research on government finance and taxation has appeared in several journals, including NATIONAL TAX JOURNAL, PUBLIC BUDGETING AND FINANCE, and PUBLIC FINANCE QUARTERLY. He received the Wildavsky Award for outstanding scholarly achievement by the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management. Mikesell earned his PhD in economics from the University of Illinois.

Customer Reviews

Easy Reading for the Average Joe
This book is organized well, and is an easy read. You don't need a PhD in economics to understand or comprehend the material. Mikesell gets his point across without trying to dazzle the reader with his detailed knowledge and experience of economic concepts. He's a decent instructor too.

How To Do IT
This is a simple, clear, practical public finance text. It describes the basic processes of taxing, borrowing (and investing public funds), and spending, carefully delineating capital budgeting and operational budgeting from cash budgeting, their purposes and functions. My students, both in our executive program and regular MBA students find it much more approachable and useful than the other public finance texts I have used, in part because it relentlessly focuses on administrative matters. The text is also sensitive to jurisdictional issues in fiscal management -- federal. state. local.

The questions at chapter ends are thought provoking and challenging without being overwhelming. I provide Excel set-ups for the problems I use, which allows students to perform a greater number of exercises in a timely manner and also for me to grade their work more easily. I'd also like to see more attention to mean variance analysis, which is one of the main integrating ideas in financial management, but otherwise I am quite pleased with this text and recommend it highly.

Good
Almost perfect!The book is new,and reaches me on time.
I find that the question marks printed in the book are all inverted,anyway, it doesn't affect reading.