Course Description: Economics is the study of choice in a world of limited resources. Scarcity causes us to face tradeoffs in our attempts to satisfy competing desires (e.g., eating pie and staying skinny, partying and getting good grades). Microeconomics focuses on decision-making by individuals, firms, and government agents through market processes. We will discuss when markets function well, when they don’t, and how government actions impact market outcomes.
Do you pay taxes? Use public goods? Encounter regulations? This class discusses the role of government as an economic agent. We will start with an overview of Public Finance, including theoretical and empirical tools of economic analysis. We will discuss government expenditures and revenues by category and identify trends for different levels of US government jurisdictions. We will discuss market failure as a justification for government interference in markets. The second half of the semester will focus on the theory and practice of taxation, including methods of distributing tax burdens; implications of taxation on equity, tax inefficiencies, taxation on labor supply, business income, and wealth.
Description:
This course is designed to introduce students to the field of public economics and to help students develop skills needed to succeed as a professional economist. This course surveys a range of issues evaluating the role of government in the market economy and the causes and consequences of government policies. Our particular focus will be the numerous strands of literature related to fiscal decentralization - how revenue and spending decisions are made in the presence of multi-tiered government. We will discuss basic methodological and practical issues associated with general economics research and the decentralization literature. The primary goal of this course is to develop the skills needed to publish in the area of Public Economics. Students will be expected to engage in discussions and to present their own, original research by the end of the semester.