Principles and problems of government financing. Expenditures, revenues, debt, and financial administration. Production by government versus production by the private sector. Tax measures to control externalities.
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Expanded Course Description
This is an introductory course in public economics that covers some concepts and issues key to all of the economics discipline. Central to economics is the concept of Pareto Efficiency, the notion that all changes that make one individual better off without hurting another should be undertaken. In this class we cover Pareto Efficiency and what is perhaps the most important result in economics, the so called "First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics" -- the idea that a market economy can, in certain circumstances, achieve Pareto Efficiency. This is a jumping off point for examining the inefficiencies that characterize the real world.
We subsequently study issues associated with public good provision, externalities, and taxation. We explore how the existence of public goods and externalities cause a market economy to allocate goods inefficiently. Further, we look at how the tax system and other mechanisms can be used to achieve efficiency even in the presence of public good or externalities. Often this involves problems of "incentive compatibility", finding ways of getting individuals to truthfully reveal their preferences when they know that doing so might prove costly to themselves.
Prereqs/Comments: