Public Budgeting and Financial Management: Getting on Track

Public Budgeting and Financial Management provides an accessible, applied introduction and overview of public budgeting for students who may not have previous experience with economics or statistics. This new textbook contains several outstanding features:

• A focus on all levels of government―federal, state, and local
• An approach that assumes no previous knowledge of economics, statistics, or mathematics
• Applied exercises in each chapter using current, real‑world scenarios
• A conversational, engaging, jargon‑free writing style.

Authors Nancy Hudspeth and Andrew Crosby examine important case studies, including the lingering financial effects of COVID‑19 on communities across the United States and the ways in which Detroit’s bankruptcy more than a decade ago continues to impact local, regional, and state finances. This book is accompanied by online instructor and student resources, including sample municipal budgets for students and quizzes with an answer key for instructors. More advanced readers will benefit from the authors’ thorough introduction to financial functions. This comprehensive and innovative new textbook will be required reading for all undergraduate and graduate courses in public budgeting and financial management, and it offers a unique one‑stop shop for traditional one‑semester budgeting courses in Master of Public Administration (MPA) programs.

Nancy Hudspeth is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, Public Administration, and Leadership Studies at California State University, Stanislaus. Her teaching and research interests are in public budgeting and finance, urban planning, equity, and fiscal transparency. Her work has appeared in Public Budgeting and Finance and the Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting, and Financial Management.

Andrew Crosby is Assistant Professor of Teaching in the School of Public Policy, University of California, Riverside. His research and teaching interests include public budgeting and financial management, intergovernmental relations, and survey methodology. His scholarly work has appeared in Public Budgeting and Finance, the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, Tobacco Control, and other journals. He has previously served as President of the American Society for Public Administration Chicago and New York Metropolitan Chapters.