Dr David Seim

Prof Johannes Spinnewijn

This course is available on the MRes/PhD in Economics and MRes/PhD in Economics and Management. This course is not available as an outside option to students on other programmes. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process. For information on controlled access courses, including eligibility, application processes, deadlines, and departmental contact details, please refer to the Controlled Access Courses webpage.

For queries contact: econ.mres.phd@lse.ac.uk

Mutually exclusive courses:

This course cannot be taken with EC534 at any time on the same degree programme.

The course will cover the economics of the public sector, including material on taxation, public expenditures and political economics. The course, which covers both theory and empirics, aims to give students a broad overview of this growing field and bring them to the research frontier.

The specific topics covered may vary from year to year. The following are likely to be included:

• Social insurance design: unemployment Insurance (and moral hazard); Health Insurance (and adverse Selection); social security; incidence.
• Inequality; intergenerational mobility; efficiency, labour supply and taxable income; employment protection.

Additional topics are explored in Public Economics for Research Students II in the Winter Term. The two half unit courses are designed to complement each other.

30 hours of lectures in the Autumn Term.

Attendance is compulsory.

Students will discuss papers in lectures.

Readings will be mainly from journal articles; a list will be supplied at the start of the term. Although the course will not be based on a textbook as such, it will make extensive use of:

• Handbook of Public Economics Vol. 1-4 (A.J. Auerbach and M. Feldstein, eds.)
• Lectures in Public Economics, A.B.Atkinson and J.E.Stiglitz, Princeton University Press, 2015.

Continuous assessment (100%).