Course Details

This course is intended to be the first part of the two-semester PhD-level Public Economics sequence. The field is large, with significant theoretical and empirical components. The first course covers core ideas in the areas of market failures and public intervention, optimal taxation, provision of public goods, political economy of taxation and redistribution, tax incidence, tax evasion.\nWe consider both normative approaches, that is, we ask what an ideal state would do in order to achieve distributive objectives, as well as positive perspectives, that is, how policies affect outcomes and how they come about. The contents will be mostly but not exclusively theoretical, and the theoretical foundations will work as building blocks for empirical studies which will be covered in more detail in Public Economics II.