The Government Finance Database: A Common Resource for Quantitative Research in Public Financial Analysis

PLoS One. 2015 Jun 24;10(6):e0130119. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0130119. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Quantitative public financial management research focused on local governments is limited by the absence of a common database for empirical analysis. While the U.S. Census Bureau distributes government finance data that some scholars have utilized, the arduous process of collecting, interpreting, and organizing the data has led its adoption to be prohibitive and inconsistent. In this article we offer a single, coherent resource that contains all of the government financial data from 1967-2012, uses easy to understand natural-language variable names, and will be extended when new data is available.

MeSH terms

  • Database Management Systems*
  • Financing, Government*
  • Public Sector*
  • United States

Grants and funding

The authors received no specific funding for this work.