Economics Of Public Finance

Monograph on public finance in the USA - includes essays on (1) analytical foundations of fiscal policy, (2) the incidence and economic implications of taxation, (3) public expenditure budgeting, and (4) state-local finance and intergovernmental fiscal relations. Graphs and references.

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.

Globalization and the information revolution have highlighted the catalytic role of local governments for improving economic and social outcomes at the local level as well as growing the national economy by enhancing international competitiveness. This comprehensive account of local public finance and economics brings together principles and better practices for improving quality and access of local public services provision. The volume covers assignment of responsibilities; jurisdictional design; local service delivery; local regulation; local self-financing options such as income, sales, property and environmental taxation, user charges and fees; infrastructure finance options; and higher order government financing of local governments. The treatment is non-technical and suitable for a wide variety of audiences including scholars, instructors, students, media, policy advisers and practitioners.

In Modern Public Finance, senior scholars in the field review and synthesize recent theoretical developments in important areas--optimal taxation, public sector dynamics, distribution theory, and club theory, to name a few--which challenge us to understand and improve public policy. Each chapter highlights original research by a recognized leader in the field, relates this work to cumulative developments, and frames important questions for further study.

There is a long-standing difference amongst public economists between those who think that collective choice must be formally acknowledged, and those who derive their policy recommendations from a social planning framework in which politics plays no role. The purpose of this book is to contribute to a meaningful dialogue between these two groups, in the belief that the future of both political economy and of normative public finance lies somewhere between the two approaches. Some of the specific questions addressed in the book include: does public finance need political economy? Should collective choice play a role in the standard of reference used in normative public finance? What is a 'failure' in a non-market or policy process? And what have we learned about the theory and practice of public finance from three decades of empirical research on public choice? The book also provides a practitioner's view of the political economy of redistribution.