Understanding Government Budgets

<p>Public budgets follow rules of presentation and use terms that make sense to few outside the world of public finance. Moreover practices vary widely among the thousands of governments across the globe between federal state and local levels of government in the United States and among nonprofit organizations many of which provide services similar to governments. <em>Understanding Government Budgets Second Edition</em> offers a detailed examination of each of the different types of information found in budgets featuring annotated examples from a variety of organizations. It expands on explanations in the previous edition by including a wealth of examples from governments abroad and from the nonprofit sector. The book stresses that the choices made about content format and organization influence the story a budget tells.</p><p>Designed to help citizens students and policy makers become more informed users of public budgets this book makes the format of budgets and the information they contain accessible and understandable providing users with the tools they need to make better sense of public organizations and their performance. Complete with online instructor support material including sample problems in-class exercises and discussion questions for each chapter <em>Understanding Government Budgets Second Edition</em> is perfect for undergraduate or graduate-level courses in budgeting and public administration and offers a useful guide to budgets for citizens with an interest in how government operates.</p>