Capital management: advancing theory and practice

Abstract

This article highlights key aspects of capital management, including capital planning, capital budgeting, capital financing, decision making and capital spending outcomes. We provide a background discussion of public sector capital management, followed by a summary of the articles that comprise this symposium. Combined, these articles illustrate the complexity of and challenges to capital management at the state and local government levels. We discuss common themes that emerge from reading these articles as a collective symposium, including: (1) modest progress in applying and empirically testing theoretical frameworks; (2) the variety of actors and institutions; and (3) the deteriorating condition and poor performance of public infrastructure. We use the articles to illustrate gaps in the research and offer suggestions for future research on capital management theory and practice.

35 Years of Public Capital Budgeting: A Review and Future Research Agenda

“…Meta-analysis is needed for the area of capital budgeting because of the importance of public capital expenditures, the scope of capital financing, and the condition of capital infrastructure. Many scholars highlight the importance of capital budgeting research (Bozeman, 1984;Chen, 2016Chen, , 2018Pagano and Perry, 2008;Srithongrung, Ermasova and Yusuf, 2019;Steiss, 2005;van der Hoek, 1996;Wie and Srithongrung, 2017). Recent notable studies (e.g., Chen, 2016Chen, , 2017Chen, , 2018Srithongrung, 2018;Srithongrung, Ermasova, and Yusuf, 2019) provide new dimensions to capital budgeting issues in public budgeting research.…”