Generating the public financial management knowledge base: analyzing method and direction as a sub-discipline of public administration

This article analyzes the content of 584 articles published in the Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting, and Financial Management and Public Budgeting and Finance with principal focus on how the public financial management knowledge base is generated. We find remarkable diversity of authorship and academic domicile. However, we note an absence of simulations and experiments and that much of the survey research does not comport with "best" practice. Practitioners were five times more likely to contribute than graduate students, and content continues a disciplinary tendency to neglect linkages between the macro-economy and public financial management. Our findings may reflect a public administration research ethos detailed by Frank Thompson and colleagues (1998) that is negatively impacted by lack of extramural funding.