PUBLIC ECONOMICS LECTURES

This is the first of two courses in the graduate public economics sequence at Harvard. This one-semester course covers basic issues in the optimal design of tax and social insurance policies, with emphasis on combining theoretical models with empirical evidence. Topics include efficiency costs and incidence of taxation, income taxation, transfer and welfare programs, public goods and externalities, optimal social insurance (excluding social security), and welfare analysis in behavioral models. The course consists of 24 lectures, each lasting 1.5 hours. The slides and reading list are divided int