The New Generation of Public Entity Risk Pools: Understanding Its Innovations and Roles in Public Finance

Abstract

As governments continue to face fiscal pressures and increasing insurance costs, public entity risk pools will play an important role in public finance and public management. Since their emergence in the 1970s, public entity risk pools have evolved from their start-up stage into mature organizations with broad missions and responsibilities. As little academic research has been done in this area, this paper is to study the current generation of public entity risk pools in terms of the environment they are in, recent innovations, and problems they face, and future research questions. The main data source comes from an electronic survey sent to the Association of Government Risk Pools' 300 members in 2006 with 28% of response rate.