College of Business & Economics

Department Management: MBA Program

Course: Management theories and Practices

Individual Assignment _ Article Review

(By: Alan J. Auerbach, 2009)

Reviewed By: Addisu Yeniabat Agaje ID No. UPGW/0068/15

Submitted to: Dr. Meselu Alamnie

March, 2023

Injibara

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 Introduction

This paper is attempted to show the strong sides and weaknesses of the article after the critical
review and understanding of the article. Accordingly I have read the article from the start to end.
The article belongs to the person called Alan J. Auerbach and is titled with “public finance in
practice and theory”. The author is a lecturer at University of California, and written in October
2009. I have reviewed the article content by content; critically reviewed and evaluated starting
from the abstract of the article, and then statement of the problem, objective setting,
methodology part, findings and the conclusion and recommendation sections of the paper. The
excursion reviewing this article has enabled me to strengthen my skill of reviewing papers, so
that, it was an awesome learning opportunity for me. My review of the article is done according
to the instruction given by the course instructor, which I did it with due consideration of it.

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The review of this specific article is done content by content. I started from the title of the article
and ended with my concluding remarks.

1. Title of the article.

The title of the article is „public finance in practice and theory‟. It contains six words. As far as
my experience is concerned, the title is good for its economy of word. Yet, it does not clearly
identify for the reader the purpose of the study as the title is too short to describe. As per my
reading a good a research title should be economical and contain at least ten words and at most
fifteen words. For this paper, although the title is economical, it is not descriptive.
Consequently, it does not tell us the intention and scope of the paper. Therefore, with respect to
the title, the paper is good in maintaining the economy of words but lacks clarity if one wants to
grasp the intent of the paper easily.

2. Abstract of the paper

I noticed that the abstract of the paper raised important points that an abstract has to have. Based
on my reading, when I go through the abstract section of the paper it has shown me the purpose
of the research work; it also identified and concluded the paper in a short and precise manner.
However, having such strengths the paper was not free from errors as the idea of abstract is
concerned. The abstract should provide a concise overview of the research and should include
information regarding the objective of the study, methodology, sample size selection, and
conclusions and recommendations. Therefore from this specific point the paper lacks clarity and
comprehensiveness.

3. Introduction part of the paper (background, statement, questions and objective)

This section of a paper should include the background, the statement of the problem, and
objective. A research paper should give the background of the issue under study. These elements
are very important as it is when these issues are addressed that users can proceed to the other
sections. In this respect as I go through the article, I have not seen the background of the study,
statement of the problem and the objectives of the study. As a result we cannot conceive the

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descriptions of the basic facts, motivations, and definitions of the key terms. Moreover, the
writer did not tell us the existing phenomenon to be studied and the deficits in existing researches
and justify the need for the study. There is no an attempt done to identify gaps in current
knowledge and research about the topic of interest and to justify the need for the study being
reported. Furthermore, the writer of the article did not state the objectives of the study. As a
result, it would have been better if these all things had been indicated and discussed clearly in the
paper. In addition, the article has missed to identify previous works on the issue, the gaps in the
existing literature and does not justify the need for this particular study. That means the author
does not identified about what is already known about the problem and what aspect of the
problem has not been investigated yet. In other words, the researcher did not identify gaps in
current knowledge and research about the topic of interest. Therefore I believe that the paper is
week to articulate the most important elements of an article.

4. Methodology

Unfortunately, as I put in the introduction the article also missed to identify/explain the
methodology part. The paper has nothing to say about the methodology part. I cannot understand
a research design, a research type, data source and type, data collection tools employed, sampling
techniques and procedures followed, sample size determination and data analysis methods.
Moreover, the validity, reliability, and justifications of conducting this research are omitted
rather than to be described. The writer simply wanted to put notes brought from different sources
by giving the pre described titles as themes of his investigation rather than telling us the elements
that should be discussed under the methodology section. These all very important parts of any
research are not indicated in the paper, so that clearly taken as a limitation of the paper.

5. Conclusion

The conclusion of a paper has to comprehensively follow the objective of the paper and make an
inference. When we look the conclusion section of the article the researcher has just put the
important statements on the conclusion part of the paper. Yet, it is not a conclusion driven from
the specific study.

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 My Concluding Remark

The thematic area of a paper can be said that interesting because public finance is the most
important public issue governments should focus especially in developing countries like
Ethiopia. In the connection it has raised important points that practitioners and academicians can
have understanding on the subjects. Having such importance, the paper has weaknesses and
strengths. In terms of strengths the literatures referenced are appropriate and directly related to
the issue under discussion; the paper is great in presenting relevant issues for the concerned
bodies/audiences; the paper has addressed the current problem that needs attentions and
intervention to reverse the problem.

When it comes to the weakness we cannot find the background, research objectives and
questions in the paper that makes readers get difficulty to grasp the importance of the study.
With such strengths and limitations the paper has addressed is a critical issue that needs to be
addressed for the sustainable development. In general, when one goes through the whole writing,
it seems a well-articulated lecture note not a research article for it has flaws too many to mention
as I have tried to point out above. Therefore, I found it difficult to call it as an article.

Therefore it is recommended that;

* All the research components should be included in the paper so as to gain with full
message of the article.
* The methodology and research instruments should be presented in the article to know the
type of data and sources.
* The sampling procedures should be described so has to understand what methods and
procedures were used to come up with the results.

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 Bibliography

Connell Meehan (1999). Writing article review. The University of Adelaide.

Linz Fitzpatrick (2020). A Quantitative Critique on a Journal Article in Reference to Individual

Differences

Michael Coughlan, Patricia Cronin and Frances Ryan. Step by step: a guide to critiquing
research.