Dr. Michael Overton (University of Idaho) and Dr. Eric Stokan (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) have been selected to receive the 2026 Best Article in the Journal of Urban Affairs Award for their paper “Rethinking development and redistribution policy: Testing the local expenditure assumption using the Community Development Block Grant program.”
This annual award gives recognition to a paper published in the Journal of Urban Affairs (during the previous year) that is considered particularly outstanding as a scholarly contribution to the field of urban affairs. The committee selected two articles to receive the award this year.
AWARD COMMITTEE ASSESSMENT
Challenging a foundational assumption in local public finance, this article demonstrates that redistributive government spending need not come at the expense of economic growth and may, in fact, promote it. Using CDBG program data and property values from Dallas County, Texas, the authors show that redistributive policies can generate positive economic returns while development expenditures produce more ambiguous outcomes. The work offers a timely corrective for policymakers inclined to treat development spending as the default path to local economic vitality.
AWARD RECIPIENT BIOS
Michael R. Overton earned his Ph.D. in Public Administration from the University of North Texas in 2015 and now serves as Associate Professor of Public Administration and Associate Director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Data Science at the University of Idaho. Before entering academia, Dr. Overton worked as a Transportation Planner at the North Central Texas Council of Governments and as Grant Manager at the John Peter Smith Foundation, experiences that continue to shape his practitioner-oriented approach to research. He has published over 20 peer-reviewed articles on topics ranging from local government competition, municipal fiscal health, economic development, public-private partnerships, community development policy, social equity, revenue forecasting, data science in the public sector, and the application of generative artificial intelligence to public administration research. He serves on the CivicPulse Academic Advisory Board and is a CLEAR Fellow. His honors include the Toulouse Dissertation Award in Social Science from the University of North Texas (2015), the Lincoln Scholars Program at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (2016), the ASPA Founders Fellowship (2017), and the Benjamin and Patricia Doty Award from the University of Idaho (2021).
Eric Stokan is the Wilson H. Elkins Associate Professor of Political Science, Faculty Affiliate in the School of Public Policy, and Director of the Center for Social Science Scholarship (CS3) at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. He also serves as Co-Director of the Metropolitan Governance and Management Transitions Lab at Indiana University Bloomington, where he works on collaborative, data-driven projects focused on public sector capacity, governance, and policy design. His research is at the intersection of public administration, urban policy, and computational social science, with a focus on how local governments navigate tradeoffs across community and economic development, social equity, and sustainability. He is currently exploring how capacities and vulnerabilities shape their AI decisions. His scholarly activities have received generous support from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, the Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation, and the Open Research Community Accelerator.
He has published 25 peer-reviewed articles in leading journals, including the Journal of Urban Affairs, Public Administration Review, and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, among others. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Urban Affairs Review and State and Local Government Review.
AWARD PRESENTATION
The formal presentation of this award will be made at the upcoming International Conference on Urban Affairs in Chicago, Illinois. The theme of this year’s conference is No Little Plans: Realizing Urban Futures in Times of Crisis. The conference will convene 1100+ participants from 55+ countries, representing 20+ fields of study. All award recipients will be formally recognized for their achievements during the Awards and Recognition Program on April 29, 2026; 3:00 – 4:15pm.
AWARD COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Christian King, University of Central Florida (Chair); Francisca Bogolasky Fliman, Universidad de Chile; Robin Chang, RWTH Aachen University; Kerry Fang, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Elsie Harper-Anderson, Virginia Commonwealth University; Jae Hong Kim, University of California, Irvine; Robert Lake, Rutgers University; Heywood Sanders, University of Texas at San Antonio; Tim Weaver, University at Albany; Lydia Wileden, University of Connecticut; Jordan Yin, Alabama A&M University
ABOUT THE URBAN AFFAIRS ASSOCIATION
The Urban Affairs Association (UAA) is an international professional organization for 1000+ urban scholars, researchers, policy analysts, & public service providers. UAA is dedicated to creating interdisciplinary spaces for engaging in intellectual and practical discussions about urban life. Through theoretical, empirical, and action-oriented research, UAA fosters diverse activities to understand and shape a more just and equitable urban world.
In addition to hosting an annual conference, UAA sponsors ongoing professional development opportunities; Upsilon Sigma: The Urban Studies Honor Society; a book series, Rights to the City, and two peer-reviewed journals, the Journal of Urban Affairs and the Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City. You can find UAA on the web, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Facebook, and X.
