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Data Sets and Case Studies

At Willamette University's Atkinson School of Management, our faculty and students are dedicated to promoting sustainable practices through academic research and real-world projects. These efforts result in impactful case studies and data sets, which are freely available for public viewing, showcasing how organizations can drive positive change in society.

  • Quantitative public financial management research is limited by the lack of a common database for empirical analysis. The U.S. Census Bureau distributes government finance data that some scholars have utilized, but the difficult process of collecting, interpreting, and organizing the data has led its adoption to be prohibitive and inconsistent. On this website we offer a single, coherent resource that contains all of the census data from 1967 through the most recent update, uses easy to understand natural-language variable names, and can be extended when new data is available.

    Because of the size of the data, the links below give you the option to download the entire database or only the set of governments you are interested in. Each download link includes a text file of the data, our research paper describing the data, and several appendices to help you work with it. We suggest that you cite our work as:

    Pierson K., Hand M., and Thompson F. (2015). The Government Finance Database: A Common Resource for Quantitative Research in Public Financial Analysis. PLoS ONE doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0130119

    Urban Institute’s State and Local Finance Initiative provides an interactive tool using state-level aggregates of nominal and inflation-adjusted revenue and spending data by level of government at this link: State and Local Finance Data

    For more information

  • Case Study Teaching Note

    Case Synopsis by Elliot Maltz | Kawika Pierson | June 21, 2022

    The case details the evolution of Schilling Cider from a small regional craft cider producer to a national brand operating in thirty states in the hard cider industry. A major factor in their evolution was their early commitment to preprinted aluminum cans as a more sustainable and economical alternative to the standard packaging in the industry—bottles.

    Having established itself it is now faced with a challenge. One of Schilling’s main suppliers of the printed aluminum cans they rely on to package their craft hard cider has announced much larger minimums orders for a run of preprinted cans.

    This has major implications for how Schilling manages their inventory and plans their product mix but does not threaten Schilling’s business model as they are now large enough to meet the minimums. However, it has very profound implications for the sustainability value proposition of aluminum cans for the broader craft cider industry.

    The announcement directed customers who could not meet its new minimum to a group of distributors with the ability to “shrink sleeve” cans. Preprinted cans have the logo and labeling of the product printed directly on the can. Shrink sleeving involves printing the logo and labeling on specially treated film and then using heat to shrink the film around the can. Unfortunately, shrink sleeving makes aluminum cans much more difficult to recycle greatly reducing the environmental benefits of aluminum cans vs. glass bottles.

    As a major player in the hard cider business and one of the driving forces for the movement to aluminum cans Schilling has to decide how to respond to this change by its supplier.