ABSTRACT

The 1980s have been labeled the “age of the entrepreneur.” Several commentators have given the Reagan administration credit for promoting the virtues of private enterprise, “leaner” governments, and entrepreneurial budgets (those that lower tax burdens). The rise of the public-sector entrepreneur is found in the advent of tax limitation movements, declining federal grants to state and local governments, growing fiscal crises faced by governments at all levels of the federal system. Public administrators as entrepreneurs and agents of entrepreneurial states seek to find new sources of revenue, besides the more traditional taxes, to increase tax bases through economic development projects and to augment the number of private-sector entrepreneurs within their boundaries. Current attention paid to public-private partnerships as solutions to the fiscal and social problems of government symbolizes the importance currently attached to both private and public entrepreneurship.