ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the capital investment strategies. It also focuses on the capital programming approach, one incorporating cost-benefit analysis and following the linear logic. The chapter illustrates cases of investments that follow an opportunistic logic. It examines the linear strategy implied in capital programming and the other procedures involved in reformed capital budgeting, with detailed attention given linear strategy's primary tool, the process of cost-benefit analysis. The chapter offers proof of innovation in its description of the ways in which state and local government financial managers reacted to uncertainty in their capital financing activities over the last 15 years. The linear model of strategy tends to blend applied microeconomics with planning and management for finance officers, yet it fails to deal with two everyday phenomena in public financial management: mandated dependence and conservatism with regard to financing tools.
