A Cloudy Crystal Ball: Pandemic Forecasting Challenges Highlight Need for Budget Relief Values

The Volcker Alliance invites you to join William Glasgall, Volcker Alliance senior director, public finance, in a conversation with Phil Dean, chief economist and public finance senior research fellow at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah and author of the forthcoming Issue Paper, A Cloudy Crystal Ball: Pandemic Forecasting Challenges Highlight Need for Budget Relief Valves.

The paper is the latest in a series of Alliance reports on state and local budgeting in the COVID Era. This issue paper focuses on budget forecasting and management lessons learned from the pandemic, drawing on data from all fifty states and interviews with executive and legislative budget officials in Alaska, California, Connecticut, Idaho, Maryland, and Utah—states with varied economic and fiscal profiles. It concludes with recommendations for policy improvements and offers a set of tools help states improve their budget management processes under varying economic scenarios. The paper also provides an appendix that outlines how revenue and expenditure estimates interact with other budget management tools to help state officials manage amid sudden changes such as those posed by the pandemic.