Dr. Pengju Zhang Invited to Present at Wichita State University Budgeting Workshop

Pengju Zhang, assistant professor and director of international programs at Rutgers SPAA, was invited by Wichita State University to attend a workshop "Building Academic-Practice Partnerships in Public Finance,” where he presented his joint work with SPAA PhD student Jinah Yoo on the characteristics and causes of the bankruptcy of special districts in the U.S.

The all-day workshop hosted by the Hugo Wall School of Public Affairs at Wichita State University focused on building partnerships between public finance practitioners and academic researchers and featured speakers from across the country who spoke on topics including infrastructure financing, decision-making, municipal sustainability, and assessment tools.

Dr. Zhang is specialized in state and local public finance, local government studies, education finance and policy, and quantitative analysis. He has published articles in Public Finance Review, Economics of Governance, and other outlets. Recently, he was was awarded the Best Paper Award at the 2022 Midwest Public Affairs Conference for his joint work titled, “Impact of Home Rule on Municipal Boundary and Fiscal Expansion: Evidence from Texas."