Tài liệu Public Economic Theory Felix Bierbrauer MPI Collective Goods

Public Economic Theory


Felix Bierbrauer
MPI Collective Goods


Summer Term 2008


Schedule:


Thursday: 12.15 – 13.45, Room: Juridicum, Hörsaal N
Friday: 12.15 -13.45, Room: Juridicum, Hörsaal N


This course focuses on the state’s role in providing public goods and on the optimal
use of taxes to finance the provision of public goods. We will mainly take a normative
perspective, i.e., we ask the question what an ideal state could do in order to achieve
allocative and distributive objectives. However, we will also contrast the results from
this normative approach with the predictions of political economics and discuss
recent developments in the literature.


1. Theory of Public Goods


1.1 An efficient provision of public goods: The Samuelson Rule


1.2 Voluntary provision of Public Goods: The free-rider problem


1.3 Lindahl’s approach


1.4. The modern theory: public good provision under asymmetric information


1.5. The political economy of public goods


2. Theory of optimal income taxation


2.1. The theory of optimal income taxation as a theory of redistribution with private
information on productive abilities: The taxation principle


2.1.2 Interpersonal comparison of utilities


2.1.3 Characterization of an optimal income tax


2.1.4. Alternative normative approaches


2.1.5. Political economy of income taxation


2.1.6. Positive theories of the welfare state