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This market-leading textbook reflects the way public policy is created, implemented, and researched, integrating theory, application, and evidence. Real-world empirical work and coverage of transfer programs and social insurance are woven with the traditional topics of public finance. This timely new edition gives students the basic tools they need to understand the driving issues of public policy today, including healthcare, education, global climate change, entitlements, and more.
List of contents
PART I Introduction and Background
1 Why Study Public Finance?
2 Theoretical Tools of Public Finance
3 Empirical Tools of Public Finance
4 Budget Analysis and Deficit Financing
PART II Externalities and Public Goods
5 Externalities: Problems and Solutions
6 Externalities in Action: Environmental and Health Externalities
7 Public Goods
8 Cost-Benefit Analysis
9 Political Economy
10 State and Local Government Expenditures
11 Education
PART III Social Insurance and Redistribution
12 Social Insurance: The New Function of Government
13 Social Security
14 Unemployment Insurance, Disability Insurance, and Workers' Compensation
15 Health Insurance I: Health Economics and Private Health Insurance
16 Health Insurance II: Medicare, Medicaid, and Health Care Reform
17 Income Distribution and Welfare Programs
PART IV Taxation in Theory and Practice
18 Taxation: How It Works and What It Means
19 The Equity Implications of Taxation: Tax Incidence < 20 Tax Inefficiencies and Their Implications for Optimal Taxation
21 Taxes on Labor Supply
22 Taxes on Savings
23 Taxes on Risk Taking and Wealth
24 Taxation of Business Income
25 Fundamental Tax Reform and Consumption Taxation
About the author
Dr. Jonathan Gruber is the Ford Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Summary
The first textbook to truly reflect the way public policy is created, implemented, and researched. Like no other text available, it integrates real-world empirical work and coverage of transfer programs and social insurance into the traditional topics of public finance.
