Thomas Luke Spreen

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Associate Professor; Senior Fellow, IPL
Affiliations:
Curriculum Vitae

Luke Spreen is an associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, senior fellow in the Institute for Public Leadership, and an affiliate of the National Center for Smart Growth. His research agenda centers on state and local tax policy and fiscal administration. To date, Spreen has published sixteen peer-reviewed articles across numerous outlets, including the Public Administration Review, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, and National Tax Journal. He has also served as a principal investigator or Co-PI on nearly $650,000 in externally funded research contracts and grants from governmental and philanthropic organizations.

Spreen’s research has been recognized by the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management and the School of Public Policy. He was the recipient of SPP’s Outstanding Teaching Award in 2023 and currently teaches graduate courses in microeconomics and public finance and budgeting. He earned his Ph.D. from the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University and was an economist at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics prior to his academic career.

Areas of Interest
  • State and local taxation; financial management; program evaluation
PLCY303 Public Economics: Raising and Spending the People’s Money
3 Credit(s)

Applied course in public finance, including introductions to resource mobilization (including taxation), macroeconomic policy, key public expenditure policies, and government budgetary processes and politics. The course will build on the foundations from ECON 200 to address the specific application of public finance principles to solving public problems. The course will focus on the principles of welfare economics (including market failure), economic principles as applied to particular spending programs and tax choices, and issues and institutions involved in the allocation and management of resources both at a national and subnational level. The focus of the course is on these issues from both a domestic and global perspective. At the conclusion of the course, students should be able to apply the tools of economics to inform societal and governmental choices, and understand how those choices are made in practice. 
Schedule of Classes

Prerequisite(s): ECON200

PLCY670 Public Budgeting & Financial Management
3 Credit(s)

Covers how governments raise, spend, borrow, and manage public funds. Reviews federal,state, and local budget processes and introduces analytical techniques including basic spreadsheet skills, evaluating alternative revenue sources, revenue and expenditure forecasting, cost allocation, capital budgeting, cost-benefit analysis, discounting and present value, bond analysis, cash management and intergovernmental finance.

Schedule of Classes

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