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Fiscal stress has forced local governments to pay increasing attention to revenue trends and has increased the importance of financial forecasting in local government. After reviewing the role of revenue forecasting in financial planning and discussing the use of regression and econometric analysis in revenue forecasting, this article applies this technique to forecast several key revenue components in a medium-sized city. Three general conclusions may be drawn: (1) systematic revenue forecasting and long-range planning are necessities, not luxuries, (2) risk aversion to "technical" revenue forecasting can be overcome, and (3) the implementation of a systematic revenue forecasting system does not require a battery of "rocket scientists." As municipal revenue bases come to rely less on relatively stable property taxes and more on less stable sources such as sales taxes, fees, and charges, the use of a regression and econometric based model should prove increasingly fruitful.

Local governments have long been concerned with economic growth and development. Some local governments take an aggressive, proactive stance on economic development, while others take a more incremental, reactionary approach. When economic development opportunities arise, the frequently asked question is “Who’s on first?” Is it the responsibility of local government to take the lead in promoting economic development opportunities, or should local government remain in the background leaving development activities to private developers? This article uses community power theory to examine the evolution of economic development in Wichita, Kansas and the roles played by the public and private sectors and their impact on the course of development activities. In order for a booster regime to be successful, the lead government must establish the legitimacy of the development effort with other potential members of the coalition. The lead government must establish a hospitable business climate and establish a commitment to support the infrastructure and service needs of developers. Coalition members must view the undertaking as a positive-sum gain.

The focus of this article is to examine the relationship between local economic growth and development and local government revenue capacity. A model is established to determine the relationship between the number of agricultural, manufacturing, service, and retail establishments per capita and employees per capita on real local government property tax capacity per capita. High property tax levies are highly negatively correlated with tax capacity. Population density, the general price level, and the presence of local retail sales taxes also play a role in determining tax capacity. New business creation in the service industry does appear to have a positive impact on local government tax capacity, while increases in agricultural, manufacturing, and retail activity do not. Although increasing concentration in the number of service establishments has a positive impact on tax capacity, increasing concentration in the number of service workers alone does not seem to lead to increases in tax capacity.

With its worldwide fame for making action films, Hong Kong cinema has been defined as masculine. Action films, including the costumed martial arts films and the modern gangster films, have been a major genre in Hong Kong cinema from the 1960s on. Despite the dominant masculinity, women still play significant roles in some of these films. In fact, fighting women leave footprints in the history of Hong Kong cinema, which precede their counterparts in the West and even provide models for Hollywood after 2000.

This chapter focuses on the female characters portrayed by the acclaimed Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, whose works have an ambiguous connection to mainstream genres. He modifies Hong Kong action films and creates unconventional female characters such as the drug dealer in Chungking Express (1994), the killer dispatcher in Fallen Angels (1995), the swordswoman in Ashes of Time (1994), and the kung fu master in The Grandmaster (2013). Wong's films have been mush discussed in academia, but the gender images therein are quite ignored. With high intertextuality, these characters are used to question mainstream action films and redefine women's roles in male's cinematic space. In addition, via the writing of these women, Wong constructs an open and ambivalent post-colonial Hong Kong identity. This paper contextualises the figures of sword-wielding and gun-shooting women and examines how Wong Kar-wai deploys these images to articulate the cultural identity of a post-colonial city.

We examine whether discretionary accruals of firms obtaining substantial external financing can be explained by managerial manipulation or managerial overoptimism. Insider trading patterns and press releases around equity and debt financing suggest that managers are more optimistic about their firms around debt financing. Consistent with earlier studies, we find that discretionary current accruals peak when firms obtain equity financing. However, we also find that discretionary accruals peak when firms obtain debt financing. Moreover, discretionary accruals are higher for firms that rely on debt rather than on equity financing. The results are robust to controlling for firm characteristics, excluding small and distressed firms, and using alternative measures of discretionary accruals. These findings support the hypothesis that managerial overoptimism distorts financial statements of firms obtaining external financing.

Anne Bartlett is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago. She holds a degree in Sociology and Social Policy from the University of the West of England and Masters degree in Sociology from the University of Chicago. Prior to this, she worked in various capacities in the British government for over fifteen years. Her Ph.D. research centers on the changing nature of political subjectivity in London, particularly as it pertains to the lives of refugees and migrants. Her other areas of interest include sociological theory, globalization, human rights and evolving forms of political culture.Katie Cangemi is a student at DePaul University.Terry Nichols Clark is Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He holds MA and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University, and has taught at Columbia, Harvard, Yale, the Sorbonne, University of Florence, and UCLA. He has worked at the Brookings Institution, The Urban Institute, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and US Conference of Mayors. His books include Citizen Politics in Post-Industrial Society, City Money, The New Political Culture, and Urban Innovation. Since 1982 he has been Coordinator of the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation (FAUI) Project, which includes a data base of over 10,000 municipalities in up to 35 countries. It is the most extensive study to date of local government in the world, including data, some 700 participants, a budget exceeding $20 million, and 50 published books, much available on the website http://www.src.uchicago.edu/depts/faui/archive.htmlRichard Florida is the author of the groundbreaking book, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How Its Transforming Work, Leisure Community and Everyday Life Basic Books 2002, stressing the rise of creativity as an economic force. He is the H. John Heinz III Professor of Economic Development at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is founder and co-director of the Software Industry Center. He has been a visiting professor at MIT and Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is co-author of five other books, including Industrializing Knowledge; Beyond Mass Production and The Breakthrough Illusion, and more than 100 articles in academic journals. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Rutgers College and Ph.D. from Columbia University.Gary Gates works in the Population Studies Center of The Urban Institute in Washington DC 20037. He completed his Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University, and is a leading researcher on gays in the U.S.Edward Glaeser is a Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He teaches urban and social economics and microeconomic theory. He has published dozens of papers on cities, economic growth, and law and economics. In particular, his work has focused on the determinants of city growth and the role of cities as centers of idea transmission. He also edits the Quarterly Journal of Economics. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1992.Pushpam Jain completed a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago.Jed Kolko is at the Department of Economics, Harvard University.Lauren Langman is Professor of Sociology at Loyola University, Chicago. His interests include alienation studies, Marxist sociology and cultural sociology. Recent publications include: Suppose They Gave a Culture War and No-one Came: Zippergate and the Carnivalization of Political Culture, American Behavioral Scientist (December, 2002); The Body and the Mediation of Hegemony: From Subject to Citizen to Audience, in Richard Brown (Ed.) Body, Self and Identity (University of Minnesota Press, 2002); From the Poetics of Pleasure to the Poetics of Protest, in Paul Kennedy (Ed.) Identity in the Global Age (Macmillan & Palmore, 2001); with Douglas Morris and Jackie Zalewski, Globalization, Domination and Cyberactivism, in Wilma A. Dunaway (Ed.) The 21st Century World-System: Systemic Crises and Antisystemic Resistance (Greenwood Press, 2002).Richard Lloyd teaches at Vanderbilt University, he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. His research interests include urban culture. Postindustrial economy, and labor force participation.Dennis Merritt completed a BA at the University of Chicago and MA at DePaul University. He was Analysis Manager of the Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation Project for four years.Albert Saiz is in the Research Department, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. He completed a Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard.Lenka Siroky studied at the Universities of Prague and Budapest, spent two years at the University of Chicago, and is currently studying at Harvard University.Kenneth Wong is Professor of Public Policy and Education and Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. He also serves as Associate Director of the Peabody Center for Education Policy at Vanderbilt University. He was Associate Professor in the Department of Education and the Social Sciences Division at the University of Chicago, where he earned his doctorate in political science. He has conducted research in American government, urban school reform, state finance and educational policies, intergovernmental relations, and federal educational policies (Title I). He is author of Funding Public Schools: Politics and Policy (1999), and City Choices: Education and Housing (1990), and a co-author of When Federalism Works (1986). He is currently the President of the Politics of Education Association.Alexei Zelenev is an Associate Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He received his Bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Chicago.