Preface |
Introduction / Part 1: |
The Public Sector in a Mixed Economy / 1: |
The Economic Role of Government |
What or Who is the Government? |
Thinking Like a Public Sector Economist |
Disagreements Among Economists |
Review and Practice |
The Public Sector in the United States / 2: |
Types of Government Activity |
Gauging the Size of the Public Sector |
Government Revenues |
Deficit Financing |
Playing Tricks With the Data on Government Activities |
Fundamentals of Welfare Economics / Part 2: |
Market Efficiency / 3: |
The Invisible Hand of Competitive Markets |
Welfare Economics and Pareto Efficiency |
Analyzing Economic Efficiency |
Market Failure / 4: |
Property Rights and Contract Enforcement |
Market Failures and the Role of Government |
Redistribution and Merit Goods |
Two Perspectives on the Role of Government |
Efficiency and Equity / 5: |
Efficiency and Distribution Trade-Offs |
Analyzing Social Choices |
Social Choices in Practice |
Three Approaches to Social Choices |
Alternative Measures of Inequality / Appendix: |
The Lorenz Curve |
The Dalton-Atkinson Measure |
Public Expenditure Theory / Part 3: |
Public Goods and Publicly Provided Private Goods / 6: |
Public Goods |
Publicly Provided Private Goods |
Efficiency Conditions for Public Goods |
Efficient Government as a Public Good |
The Leftover Curve / Appendix A: |
Measuring the Welfare Cost of user Fees / Appendix B: |
Public Choice / 7: |
Public Mechanisms for Allocating Resources |
Alternatives for Determining Public Goods Expenditures |
Politics and Economics |
New Preference-Revelation Mechanisms |
Public Production and Bureaucracy / 8: |
Natural Monopoly: Public Production of Private Goods |
Comparison of Efficiency in the Public and Private Sectors |
Sources of Inefficiency in the Public Sector |
Corporatization |
A Growing Consensus on Government's Role in Production |
Externalities and the Environment / 9: |
The Problem of Externalities |
Private Solutions to Externalities |
Public Sector Solutions to Externalities |
Protecting the Environment: the Role of Government in Practice |
Expenditure Programs / Part 4: |
The Analysis of Expenditure Policy / 10: |
Need for Program |
Market Failures |
Alternative Forms of Government Intervention |
The Importance of Particular Design Features |
Private Sector Responses to Government Programs |
Efficiency Consequences |
Distributional Consequences |
Equity-Efficiency Trade-Offs |
Public Policy Objectives |
Political Process |
Cost-Benefit Analysis / 11: |
Private Cost-Benefit Analysis |
Social Cost-Benefit Analysis |
Consumer Surplus and the Decision to Undertake a Project |
Measuring Non-Monetized Costs and Benefits |
Shadow Prices and Market Prices |
Discount Rate for Social Cost-Benefit Analysis |
The Evaluation of Risk |
Distributional Considerations |
Cost Effectiveness |
Health Care / 12: |
The Health Care System in the United States |
Rationale For a Role of Government in the Health Care Sector |
Reforming Health Care |
Defense and Technology / 13: |
Defense Expenditures |
Increasing the Efficiency of the Defense Department |
Defense Conversion |
Technology |
Social Insurance / 14: |
The Social Security System |
Social Security, Private Insurance, and Market Failures |
Should Social Security be Reformed? |
Reforming Social Security |
Welfare Programs and the Redistribution of Income / 15: |
A Brief Description of Major U.S. Welfare Programs |
Rationale for Government Welfare Programs |
Analytic Issues |
Welfare Reform: Integration of Programs |
The Welfare Reform Bill of 1996 |
Concluding Remarks |
Education / 16: |
The Structure of Education in the United States |
Why is Education Publicly Provided and Publicly Financed? |
Issues and Controversies in Educational Policy |
Aid to Higher Education |
How Should Public Educational Funds be Allocated? |
Taxation: Theory / Part 5: |
Introduction to Taxation / 17: |
Background |
The Five Desirable Characteristics of any Tax System |
General Framework for Choosing Among Tax Systems |
Tax Incidence / 18: |
Tax Incidence in Competitive Markets |
Tax Incidence of Environments Without Perfect Competition |
Equivalent Taxes |
Other Factors Affecting Tax Incidence |
Incidence of Taxes in the United States |
Comparison of the Effects of an Ad Valorem and Specific Commodity Tax on a Monopolist |
Taxation and Economic Efficiency / 19: |
Effect of Taxes Borne by Consumers |
Quantifying the Distortions |
Effects of Taxes Borne by Producers |
Taxation of Savings |
Taxation of Labor Income |
Measuring the Effects of Taxes on Labor Supplied |
Optimal Taxation / 20: |
Two Fallacies of Optimal Taxation |
Optimal and Pareto Efficient Taxation |
Differential Taxation |
Taxes on Producers |
Deriving Ramsey Taxes on Commodities |
Derivation of Ramsey Formula for Linear Demand Schedule |
Taxation of Capital / 21: |
Should Capital be Taxed? |
Effects on Savings and Investment |
Impact on Risk Taking |
Measuring Changes in Asset Values |
Taxation in the United States / Part 6: |
The Personal Income Tax / 22: |
Outline of the U.S. Income Tax |
Principles Behind the U.S. Income Tax |
Practical Problems in Implementing an Income Tax System |
Special Treatment of Capital Income |
Concluding Comments |
The Corporation Income Tax / 23: |
The Basic Features of the Corporation Income Tax |
The Incidence of the Corporation Income Tax and its Effect on Efficiency |
Depreciation |
Combined Effects of Individual and Corporate Income Tax |
The Corporation Tax as Economic Policy |
Taxation of Multinationals |
Should There be a Corporation Income Tax? |
A Student's Guide to Tax Avoidance / 24: |
Principles of Tax Avoidance |
Tax Shelters |
Tax Reform and Tax Avoidance |
Equity, Efficiency, and Tax Reform |
Reform of the Tax System / 25: |
Fairness |
Efficiency |
Simplifying the Tax Code and Reducing Administrative Costs |
Transition Issues and the Politics of Tax Reform |
Tax Reforms for the Twenty-First Century |
Further Issues / Part 7: |
Fiscal Federalism / 26: |
The Division of Responsibilities |
Principles of Fiscal Federalism |
Production Versus Finance |
State and Local Taxes and Expenditures / 27: |
Tax Incidence Applied to Local Public Finance |
Capitalization |
Public Choice at the Local Level |
Problems of Multi-Jurisdictional Taxation |
Deficit Finance / 28: |
The U.S. Deficit Problem Since the 1980s |
Consequences of Government Deficits |
Improving the Budgetary Process |
The Long-Term Problem: Entitlements and the Aged |
Preface |
Introduction / Part 1: |
The Public Sector in a Mixed Economy / 1: |