The evolving modern world is characterized by two opposing trends: integration and segregation. On the one hand, we witness strong forces for segregation on the basis of nationality, ethnicity, religion, and culture in the former Soviet Union, the former Czechoslovakia, the former Yugoslavia, as well as in Northern Ireland, Spain, and Canada. These forces are quite strong and, in some cases, violent. On the other hand, the European Union and NAFTA represent the tendency for integration motivated primarily by economic considerations (such as gains from trade and scale economies). In fact, these opposing trends can be explained by the concepts developed in modern club theory, local public finance, and international trade.

A rigorous, self-contained textbook covering all the central topics in public economics.

This volume reviews current developments taking place in public sector economics and covers issues in both public expenditure and taxation. Trends in public spending, and their determinants, are reviewed along with recent developments in the public choice perspective and the analysis of the demand for public goods. Taxation issues include the incentive effects of taxation, tax evasion and compliance costs and taxation in developing countries. The book concludes with a discussion of the public sector and income distribution and fiscal federalism. Other topics include privatization and deregulation.

Public Economics: A Concise Introduction provides a concise and non-technical overview of the role of government in the economy. Using the questions ‘why?’, ‘what for?’ and ‘how?’, the text initially surveys the place of the public sector in a market economy. It then considers the possible reasons which could justify government involvement. Next, the book examines the aims of state economic activity, and the instruments which a government has at its disposal. Lastly, the final chapter provides an illuminating tour of economic history and history of economic thought in relation to government economic activity. The book offers an international focus throughout, with examples taken from all over the globe. Readers are supported with a range of pedagogical features, including example boxes, chapter objectives and summaries, and end-of-chapter multiple choice and reflection questions. Public Economics: A Concise Introduction will be a valuable text for students on courses in public economics, welfare economics, public finance, public policy and related areas.

A new edition of a comprehensive text, updated throughout, with new material on behavioral economics, international taxation, cost-benefit analysis, and the economics of climate policy. Public economics studies how government taxing and spending activities affect the economy—economic efficiency and the distribution of income and wealth. This comprehensive text on public economics covers the core topics of market failure and taxation as well as recent developments in both policy and the academic literature. It is unique not only in its broad scope but in its balance between public finance and public choice and its combination of theory and relevant empirical evidence. The book covers the theory and methodology of public economics; presents a historical and theoretical overview of the public sector; and discusses such topics as departures from efficiency (including imperfect competition and asymmetric information), issues in political economy, equity, taxation, fiscal federalism, and tax competition among independent jurisdictions. Suggestions for further reading, from classic papers to recent research, appear in each chapter, as do exercises. The mathematics has been kept to a minimum without sacrificing intellectual rigor; the book remains analytical rather than discursive. This second edition has been thoroughly updated throughout. It offers new chapters on behavioral economics, limits to redistribution, international taxation, cost-benefit analysis, and the economics of climate policy. Additional exercises have been added and many sections revised in response to advice from readers of the first edition.

The second edition of Public Finance and Public Policy retains the first edition's themes of investigation of responsibilities and limitations of government. The present edition has been rewritten and restructured. Public choice and political economy concepts and political and bureaucratic principal-agent problems are introduced at the beginning for application to later topics. Fairness, envy, hyperbolic discounting, and other concepts of behavioral economics are integrated throughout. The consequences of asymmetric information and the tradeoff between efficiency and ex-post equality are recurring themes. Key themes investigated are markets and governments, institutions and governance, public goods, public finance for public goods, market corrections (externalities and paternalist public policies), voting, social justice, entitlements and equality of opportunity, choice of taxation, and the need for government. The purpose of the book is to provide an accessible introduction to the use of public finance and public policy to improve on market outcomes.

This textbook provides a thorough treatment of all the central topics in public economics. Aimed at senior undergraduate and graduate students, it will also be invaluable to professional economists and to those teaching in the field. The book is entirely self-contained, giving all the equilibrium theory and welfare economics needed to understand the analyses. The author covers the Arrow-Debreu economy, welfare economics and the measurement of inequality and poverty which lay the foundations and emphasise the important role played by information. Within the competitive economy, he examines commodity taxation, income taxation and tax reform in a certain environment. He goes on to study the public economics of uncertainty, and then treats public goods, externalities, imperfect competition and tax evasion as departures from the standard competitive assumptions and looks at their implication for public economics derived.

How to Write about Economics and Public Policy is designed to guide graduate students through conducting, and writing about, research on a wide range of topics in public policy and economics. This guidance is based upon the actual writing practices of professional researchers in these fields and it will appeal to practitioners and students in disciplinary areas such as international economics, macroeconomics, development economics, public finance, policy studies, policy analysis, and public administration. Supported by real examples from professional and student writers, the book helps students understand what is expected of writers in their field and guides them through choosing a topic for research to writing each section of the paper. This book would be equally effective as a classroom text or a self-study resource. - Teaches students how to write about qualitative and quantitative research in public policy and economics in a way that is suitable for academic consumption and that can drive public policy debates - Uses the genre-based approach to writing to teach discipline-appropriate ways of framing problems, designing studies, and writing and structuring content - Includes authentic examples written by students and international researchers from various sub-disciplines of economics and public policy - Contains strategies and suggestions for textual analysis of research samples to give students an opportunity to practice key points explained in the book - Is based on a comprehensive analysis of a research corpus containing 400+ research articles in various areas of public policy and economics

This text by one of Europe's leading economists covers a wide variety of public economics issues with great clarity and precision, illustrating them with a wealth of carefully-chosen examples and problems. Starting from theories of general equilibrium analysis, Laffont considers issues of market failure, collective decisionmaking, and distributional equity. He analyzes the important informational and motivational problems involved in planning solutions for market failures, and provides a rigorous justification for the theoretical foundations of public economics. Topics include the theories of externalities, public goods, collective choice, consumer surplus, cost-benefit analysis and/or theory of the second best, incomplete markets, and nonconvexities. For each Laffont begins with the classical foundations, moves on to consider the topic within a simple model of the economy, and concludes by integrating results from recent journal articles into this simple framework. In this way students are led to understand the classical tradition in the context of modern general equilibrium theory. The book concludes with eight problems with solutions, each interesting and rich enough to be considered a case study, and nine exercises without solutions; together they provide an excellent review of material covered in the text. The basic approach in each problem is to set up a general equilibrium model, discover the market failure by calculating the unfettered equilibrium, and develop an explicit planning solution. Jean-Jacques Laffont is Professor of Economics at the University of Social Sciences at Toulouse. Fundamentals of Economics may be used in either an advanced graduate-level course in public economics or in conjunction with a second volume forthcoming by the same author in a course in advanced microeconomics.

This wide-ranging, up-to-date and detailed account of all aspects of public economics covers topics as varied as: * classical theorems of welfare economics * the theory of public expenditure * the effects of taxation on savings, labour supply investment and risk-taking * commodity, income and expenditure taxation * public sector and cost-benefit analysis * fiscal federalism. Written by Raghbendra Jha, an author with an established reputation, this book fills the gap in literature on this topic and will be a valuable reference for undergraduates in the fields of economics and public finance.