Bøker i Elements in Public Economics-serien

The objective of this Element is to provide an analysis of social protection from an economic perspective. It relies on tools and methods widely used in public and insurance economics and comprises four main section besides the introduction. The first section is devoted to the design of social protection programs and their political sustainability. The second section assesses the efficiency and performance of social protection programs, and of the welfare state as a whole. In the third section, the relative merits of social and private insurance are analyzed as well as the design of optimum insurance contract with emphasis on health and pensions. The last section focuses on the implications of asymmetric information that may lead governments to adopt policies that would otherwise be rejected in a perfect information setting.

Why is an understanding of political competition essential for the study of public economics and public policy generally? How can political competition be described and understood, and how does it differ from its strictly economic counterpart? What are the implications of the fact that policy proposals in a democracy must always pass a political test? What are the strengths and weaknesses of electoral competition as a mechanism for the allocation of economic resources? Why are tax structures in democratic polities so complicated, and what implications follow from this for normative views about good policy choice? How can the intensity of political competition be measured, why and how does it vary in mature democracies, and what are the consequences? This Element considers how answers to these questions can be approached, while also illustrating some of the interesting theoretical and empirical work that has been done on them.

Behavioral science is playing an increasing role in public policy, and it is raising new questions about fundamental issues - the role of government, freedom of choice, paternalism, and human welfare. In diverse nations, public officials are using behavioral findings to combat serious problems - poverty, air pollution, highway safety, COVID-19, discrimination, employment, climate change, and occupational health. Exploring theory and practice, this Element attempts to provide one-stop shopping for those who are new to the area and for those who are familiar with it. With reference to nudges, taxes, mandates, and bans, it offers concrete examples of behaviorally informed policies. It also engages the fundamental questions, include the proper analysis of human welfare in light of behavioral findings. It offers a plea for respecting freedom of choice - so long as people's choices are adequately informed and free from behavioral biases.

Tax policies are informed by principles developed in the tax theory and policy literature. This Element surveys the policy lessons that emerge from optimal tax analysis since the 1970s. This Element begins with the evolution of tax policy principles from the comprehensive income approach to the expenditure tax approach to normative tax analysis based on social welfare maximization and recounts key results from the optimal income tax analysis inspired by Mirrlees and extended by Diamond to the extensive margin approach. This Element also emphasizes analytical techniques that yield empirically relevant concepts and show the equity-efficiency trade-off at the heart of tax policy. We also extend the analysis to recent literature incorporating involuntary unemployment, and policies like welfare and unemployment insurance.

Fiscal federalism has long been an important topic of inquiry in applied public economics, and interest in the functioning of intergovernmental fiscal relationships in multi-tiered public sector structures does not seem to be fading. Rather, the recent economic downturn and sovereign debt crisis have brought the analysis of multi-level fiscal governance to the forefront of academic discourse and stimulated the search for tax assignments that ease coordination between authorities at different tiers while preserving local fiscal autonomy and minimizing the harmful effects of taxation on the prospects of economic recovery. This Element examines the recent empirical work in this area and discusses the most critical issues that future research will need to address in order to push further the frontier of econometric analysis in fiscal federalism.

Our societies are witnessing a steady increase in longevity. This demographic evolution is accompanied by some convergence across countries, but substantial longevity inequalities persist within nations across income classes. This Element aims to survey some crucial implications of changing longevity on the design of optimal public policy.

Have you ever wondered, how your telephone company or Internet service provider can give you access to almost all people in the world or how electricity suppliers can compete with each other if there is only one electric supply line passing through your street? This Element deals with the economics and public regulation of such network industries.

This Element provides a broad overview of economic aspects of commodity taxation with a focus on theory and on policy in OECD countries. The authors discuss major research questions and issues, including commodity taxes, international aspects of tax policy, behavioural effects of taxation, and environmental and health policy aspects.

Given the ease with which multinationals can evade tax, the existing corporate tax structure faces major pressures, as reflected in average statutory corporate tax rates halving in recent decades. This Element speculates on alternative tax structures that will avoid these problems.

Surveys some of the earlier results in linear and nonlinear taxation and produces some new numerical results. Examines empirically the relationship between the extent of redistribution and the components of the Mirrlees framework. Analyses the redistributive role of a range of factors in the Mirrlees framework.

Refutes the commonly imagined threat to welfare states: that the welfare state package reduces the level and growth of GDP. Explores the threat of the rise of anti-immigrant backlash. Also investigates population aging, which poses a serious problem for financing old age.

Provides a summary of recent theoretical and empirical developments and summarizes state-of-the-art stated-preference and revealed-preference valuation methods. Discusses how to assess the impact of small and large projects on prices and other economic variables. A novel feature is the flexible evaluation rules for reasonably small projects.