Share this content
Submissions open 1st January 2025
Introduction
While the use of the experimental research design has exploded in popularity and use in related fields (i.e Chetty and Saez 2013; Christ, Sedatole and Towry 2012; Kahneman, Knetsch and Thaler 1990), the use in public budgeting, accounting, and financial management has been less extensive. This can be traced to the uniqueness of government budgeting environments that are often not decisions made by a single person (Mohr and Davis 2023). So the focus of traditional behavioral research that focuses primarily on individual decision making (i.e. Battaglio et. al. 2019) may be devoid of practical relevance. In spite of this, there are many contexts of public budgeting, accounting, and financial management that individual decision making is appropriate and there may be creative extensions of experiments, such as quasi-experimental designs that can be used to address practical problems or generate theory.
Despite a relative dearth of public budgeting experiments relative to other related disciplines in the social sciences, the use of experimental research in public budgeting, accounting, and financial management has been progressing (Mohr and Kearney 2021). The last few years have seen exciting new research, such as research into the effect of risk and loss aversion on budget decisions (Litton 2022), the effect of default starting conditions in online budget simulation environments (Mohr and Afonso 2023), the effect of performance information and accrual-based cost information on budgetary decision making (Kuroki and Motokawa 2021), and the effect of nudge-based intervention on budgetary decision making (Kuroki and Sasaki 2023). These are just a couple of the original experimental research designs that have begun to emerge in the public budgeting literature. However, we still do not see the explosion of experimental research that has been observed in other fields (i.e. Li and Van Ryzin 2017).
The limited amount of research that has been published to this point belies the interest in the field that seeks to understand and apply new theories from other fields, such as psychology to budgeting contexts. New experimental designs, such as discrete choice experiments, and quasi-experimental designs, such as discontinuity designs, allow for inference that is similar to that of a randomized experiment, but that also extends what might be possible. We seek both traditional experimental designs and the best of what is new in the field. The purpose of this special issue is to explore the range of possibilities for the field.
List of Topic Areas
• Cognitive biases and heuristics on financial decision making
• NUDGES and choice architecture
• The effect of heuristics and biases in financial decision making
• Noise and its effect on financial decision making
• Emotion and affect in financial decision making
• Budget and accounting format experiments and quasi-experiments
• Budget simulation experiments
• Performance information experiments
• Accounting information and transparency experiments
• Tax rates, structure, and audit mechanisms on compliance
• Budget and revenue transparency on levels of citizen trust and satisfaction
• Budget field experiments
• Managerial accounting and accountability experiments
• Quasi-experiments with budget or financial outcomes
• Formal theory with laboratory experimental tests
Previous public budgeting and financial management journals have sought behavioral research and special issues; however, none have focused specifically on research using experiments or quasi-experiments in public budgeting and financial management contexts. The focus of this special issue is on the use of experimental and quasi-experimental research designs in public budgeting. Experimental research designs are generally thought to include both treatments and randomization of subjects into the treatment groups. In the case of quasi-experimental designs, the randomization may not be truly random.
This special issue seeks a broad array of public budgeting topics, inclusive of budgeting, accounting, financial management, financial decision making, and performance management research. It is also broadly inclusive of theories from a variety of disciplines including economics, political science, psychology, management and any other discipline that speaks to key issues of the field, and it seeks a variety of experimental research designs. While most BPA research focuses on cognitive biases (Battaglio et al., 2019), we seek to encourage theoretical development and cross fertilization of theories from both psychology and other fields - such as economics, political science, and the social and management sciences broadly - that are important to public budgeting, accounting, and financial management. The purpose of the experimental analysis can be for practical research purposes, or it can be an experiment or quasi-experiment to build the theory of the field, and the units of analysis can be from any level of the policy process (i.e. micro-individual level, meso- organizational level, or macro-nations or communities level).
Submissions Information
Submission portal opens January 1, 2025
Review abstracts monthly until March 30, 2025
Deadline to submit articles to the Special Issue June 30, 2025
Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Author guidelines must be strictly followed.
Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to ““Please select the issue you are submitting to”. Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.
Review of abstracts
Authors that wish to receive feedback on an abstract may submit one at the following link. We will provide feedback on abstracts monthly until the end of March.
https://forms.gle/CTP2hWrBUcAv5tTv6
Contact information
For questions not related to the abstract, please contact Zach Mohr ([email protected]).
Citations
Battaglio Jr, R. P., et al. (2019). "Behavioral public administration ad fontes: A synthesis of research on bounded rationality, cognitive biases, and nudging in public organizations." Public Administration Review 79(3): 304-320.
Chetty, R., & Saez, E. (2013). Teaching the tax code: Earnings responses to an experiment with EITC recipients. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 5(1), 1-31.
Christ, M. H., Sedatole, K. L., & Towry, K. L. (2012). Sticks and carrots: The effect of contract frame on effort in incomplete contracts. The Accounting Review, 87(6), 1913-1938.
Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J. L., & Thaler, R. H. (1990). Experimental tests of the endowment effect and the Coase theorem. Journal of political Economy, 98(6), 1325-1348.
Kuroki, M,, and S. Sasaki (2023). "Nudging public budget officers: A field-based survey experiment.” Public Budgeting & Finance 43: 3–20.
Kuroki, M. and K. Motokawa (2021). "Do non-financial performance and accrual-based cost information affect public sector budgeting?" Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management 34(6): 95-116.
Li, H. and G. G. Van Ryzin (2017). A systematic review of experimental studies in public management journals. Experiments in Public Management Research. O. James, S. R. Jilke and G. G. Van Ryzin, Cambridge.
Litton, E. (2023). Loss aversion and risk propensity in public budgeting. Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management, 35(1), 95-114.
Mohr, Z. and W. Afonso (2024). "Budget starting position matters: A “field‐in‐lab” experiment testing simulation engagement and budgetary preferences." Public Budgeting & Finance 44(1): 60-80.
Mohr, Z. and J. Davis (2023). "Simon’s Behavior and Waldo’s Public: The ABCS Model of Public Behavior and Social Interactions." Journal of Behavioral Public Administration 6.
Mohr, Z. and L. Kearney (2021). "Behavioral-Experimental Public Budgeting and Financial Management: A Review of Experimental Studies in the Field." Public Finance & Management 20(1): 22-44.
Share this content