The theme of the Fifth Annual Public Finance Consortium is “Politics and Administration in Public Finance.” In the wake of the recent U.S. election, there is enormous interest in political division, polarization, political geography, constitutional protections of political minorities, and public administration. These topics intersect with public fiscal decision making on innumerable dimensions which this conference seeks to address. Illustrative topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• The politics of deficit spending
• Conducting tax audits of political actors
• Extracting revenue across the urban-rural divide
• Trade-offs in different considerations of “Tax Justice”
• Allocating expenditures in comparative electoral systems
• Constitutional rights in taxing political minorities
• Equity concerns in expenditure choices and/or revenue raising alternatives;
• The administration of fiscal and monetary policy