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Abstract

Data obtained from 67% of U.S. urban county governments surveyed in 1988-1989 relate to the meaning of fiscal stress and its causes, forms of stress experienced, and respondent actions taken to alleviate fiscal problems. Stress indicators judged to have the highest validity (debt default and inability to meet payrolls) were rarely evident, yet vulnerability to less severe forms of stress was relatively widespread and not limited to any class of chronically distressed counties. Chief causes of stress were changes in the intergovernmental fiscal system-not structural economic or demographic changes. Responses to stress conformed more to an organizational-political rationality model than to the garbage-can model of decision making.

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Urban County Fiscal Stress

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