Doctoral Dissertation Defense: Xiaoheng Wang
May 20, 2019
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
The Department of Public Administration is pleased to announce the upcoming doctoral dissertation defense:
Candidate: Xiaoheng Wang, PhD in Public Administration
Title: " The Financial Condition of American’s Large Cities: The Role of Fiscal Institutions, Decentralization, and Intergovernmental Aid”
Date/Time: Monday May 20, 2019 1:00 pm
Location: UIC Art and Exhibition Hall (AEH)
400 South Peoria St., Chicago, IL 60607, Room 2203
Dissertation Committee:
Dr. Yonghong Wu, Chair (UIC-Department of Public Administration)
Dr. Michael A. Pagano (UIC-Department of Public Administration)
Dr. David F. Merriman (UIC-Department of Public Administration)
Dr. Rebecca Hendrick (UIC-Department of Public Administration)
Dr. Michael D. Siciliano (UIC- Department of Public Administration)
Dr. Craig S. Maher (University of Nebraska at Omaha)
*All are welcome to this public defense.*
See below for the Dissertation Abstract.
ABSTRACT
Since the Great Recession, declining revenues and increasing needs for public goods and services has become a growing concern for municipalities that serve as a key provider for citizens’ local services. In this sense, local governments’ ability to sustain a healthy fiscal structure and meet service obligations is critical to avoid financial hardships and relieve tension between public administrators and citizens, especially when facing recessions. Financial condition reflects a government’s capacity to meet both short/long-term and service obligations, and it is related to different characteristics of the government’s internal fiscal structure and external fiscal and political environment. This dissertation measures municipal financial condition in three dimensions (cash, budget and long-term solvency) and specifically examines the three intergovernmental and institutional factors (state-imposed TELs on local governments, fiscal decentralization, and intergovernmental aid) on municipal fiscal condition.
This dissertation contributes to a better theoretical understanding of the complexities of financial condition process. Also, this dissertation uses data from government-wide financial statements to measure municipal financial condition, which can better evaluate the overall fiscal health of the government and compare, analyze, and explain the financial condition in a more accurate and comprehensive manner.
The results from the two-ways fixed-effects panel regression show that cities with stringent TELs tend to have small government-wide cash reserves in the short-term but are more likely to excessively rely on debt, therefore facing difficulty in the payment of long-term liabilities. Second, an increased level of revenue decentralization is significantly associated with lower budget solvency and higher long-term solvency; while an increased level of expenditure decentralization leads to higher cash solvency and lower long-term solvency. Finally, municipalities with more intergovernmental aid are likely to increase cash holdings but may experience unbalanced budget and more financing responsibilities in the future.
Date posted
May 14, 2019
Date updated
May 14, 2019