Professor F Cowell, LRB. R520, Dr J Leape, Y211, Professor T Atkinson and Dr H Kleven, LRB. R518

This course is for MSc Economics and MSc Econometrics and Mathematical Economics.  Other graduates on MSc International Health Policy, MSc International Health Policy (Health Economics), MSc Environmental Economics and Climate Change, LLM, MPA Public and Economic Policy/MPA Public Policy and Management/MPA International Development/MPA European Public and Economic Policy/MPA Public and Social Policy may attend with the permission of the MSc Economics programme Director. This will normally only be granted to students who have taken EC400 (Introductory Course in Mathematics and Statistics) held annually in September and achieved the required standard.

Students should have completed a course in intermediate level microeconomics and EC400 (Introductory Course in Mathematics and Statistics).

A graduate course in (i) the principles of public economics and (ii) selected topics in public economics.

Principles of public economics Welfare analysis; concepts of fairness, equity and efficiency; social welfare. Policy design: social insurance, income taxation. Taxation; household and firm behaviour. Public goods, externalities and environmental policy. Behavioural public economics, including implications for welfare analysis and savings policy.

Selected topics in public economics such as behavioural responses to taxation; empirical strategies in public economics; poverty, inequality and optimal low-income support; compliance problems; inheritance and wealth taxation; global public finance and fiscal governance; political economics.

Lectures: 20 x two-hours MT and LT.

Classes: 20 x one-hour MT and LT.

Attention is also drawn to Issues in Taxation Seminar (Dr Leape and Dr Ian Roxan) LL900: eight Monthly, Sessional.

Most of the readings will be in the form of journal articles, but some use will also be made of the following texts: A Auerbach & M S Feldstein (Eds), Handbook of Public Economics, Vols I-III, North-Holland; A B Atkinson & J E Stiglitz, Lectures on Public Economics, McGraw-Hill, 1980; G Myles, Public Economics, Cambridge University Press, 1995.

A three-hour written examination in the ST. Additionally, students taking MSc Economics, and MSc Econometrics and Mathematical Economics will be required to submit an extended essay at the beginning of the ST; for such students the written examination and the extended essay will each count for half of the marks.