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Accumulation of Local Government Savings

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Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance

Synonyms

Financial slack; Unreserved general fund balance

Definition

Government saving, often referred to as financial slack, is the financial resources that are accounting based and can be measured objectively. It is measured as a government’s unreserved or unassigned general fund balance.

Introduction

Government savings can be a conundrum that perplexes many taxpayers. Excessive savings indicate that taxpayers either pay unnecessarily high taxes or they do not receive adequate returns on services. Insufficient savings on the other hand leave government officials little financial flexibility to respond to unanticipated events. The Great Recession and its aftermath have renewed interest in understanding government savings. The advent of the Great Recession in 2008 brought tremendous challenge to local administrators. They had to tackle with increased demand for public goods and services with diminished revenue. Struggling local governments could expect little help, if any, from their...

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Correspondence to Min Su .

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Su, M. (2019). Accumulation of Local Government Savings. In: Farazmand, A. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_3780-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31816-5_3780-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-31816-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-31816-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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