Public Sector Economics, (4 Volume Set)

How does government taxing and spending affect an economy, and how can we determine whether government policies promote a society’s economic objectives? What economic activities should governments undertake? Should they do less? How should an optimal tax system be designed? What information is required to determine the best possible distribution of income? And what are the advantages (or otherwise) of a federalist structure of government?

These are the kind of dizzying questions addressed by those working in public sector economics, and this new title in the Routledge series, Critical Concepts in Economics, meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of the subdiscipline’s vast literature and the continuing explosion in research output.

Edited by Richard W. Tresch, author of a leading graduate textbook in the field, and a proponent of the mainstream theory of the public sector, this new Routledge Major Work brings together in four volumes the foundational and the very best cutting-edge scholarship to provide comprehensive coverage of many of the subdiscipline’s most important topics.

Volume I (‘Public Expenditures’) assembles the key work on the responses of governments to markets for desired goods and services that operate inefficiently or not at all. The main questions addressed include: what markets should a government become involved in to restore efficiency to the economy? How should it proceed in each instance to promote efficiency? And what are the factors that impede its efforts to restore efficiency?

Volume II (‘Taxation’) collects the most important research on taxation and the principal normative issue of how best to design good taxes from an economic perspective (i.e. taxes that are simple, equitable, and do the least harm to a government’s pursuit of efficiency). Issues explored here include the two main positive economic questions associated with taxation: how do the main taxes that governments use affect economic behaviour, primarily the supply of labour, saving and investment, and the incentives to evade paying these taxes; and tax incidence—who bears the burden of these taxes?

Volume III (‘Distribution’) brings together the best work on the pursuit of equity by governments through its taxes and transfer payments. Fundamental questions tackled include the optimal amount of redistribution a government should undertake through taxes and transfers, and how it should best design its transfer programmes to meet distributional goals.

The scholarship assembled in the final volume (‘Federalism’) explores the special problems that arise from having a tiered system of (supra-)national, state or provincial, and local governments. Primary issues within federalism include questions about which levels of government should perform the various legitimate functions of government, and how the movement of people in response to state/provincial and local taxes and expenditures affect the quest for equitable and efficient government policies. This volume also covers the important subsidiary debate over the use and effects of grants-in-aid from higher-level to lower-level governments.

Fully indexed and with a useful introduction to the collection, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Public Sector Economics is an essential work of reference. It is destined to be valued by scholars and students as a vital research resource.
 

Volume I : Public Expenditures

Chapter 1 : The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure’, Review of Economics and Statistics, 1954
Chapter 2 : Pigou, Taxation, and Public Goods’, Review of Economic Studies, 1974
Chapter 3 : Cooperation in Public Goods Experiments : Kindness or Confusion?’, American Economic Review, 1995
Chapter 4 : The Problem of Social Cost’, Journal of Law and Economics
Chapter 5 : The Coase Theorem is Tautological, Incoherent, or Wrong’, Economic Letters, 1998
Chapter 6 : Does Voluntary Participation Undermine The Coase Theorem?’, Journal of Public Economics, 2000
Chapter 7 : The Invisible Hand and Externalities’, American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, 1994
Chapter 8 : Multipart Pricing of Public Goods’, Public Choice, 1971
Chapter 9 : A New and Superior Process of Making Social Choices’, Journal of Political Economy, 1976
Chapter 10 : Optimal Taxation and Public Production (Part I : Production Efficiency)’, American Economic Review, 1971
Chapter 11 : Implementing The Efficient Allocation of Pollution’, American Economic Review, 2002
Chapter 12 : The Market for Sulfur Dioxide Emissions’, American Economic Review, 1998
Chapter 13 : On The Management of Public Monopolies Subject to Budgetary Constraints’, Journal of Economic Theory, 1971
Chapter 14 : Overinsurance and The Public Provision of Insurance : The Roles of Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1974
Chapter 15 : Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets : An Essay on The Economics of Imperfect Information’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1976
Chapter 16 : Social Security’, American Economic Review, 2004
Chapter 17 : Rethinking Social Insurance’, American Economic Review, 2005
Chapter 18 : Theoretical Progress in Public Economics : A Provocative Assessment’, Oxford Economic Papers, 1990
Chapter 19 : Integrating Equity and Efficiency in Applied Welfare Economics’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1976
Chapter 20 : The Constitution of Economic Policy’, American Economic Review, 1987
Chapter 21 : The General Theory of The Second Best’, Review of Economic Studies, 1956
Chapter 22 : Prices vs : Quantities’, Review of Economic Studies, 1974
Chapter 23 : Public Finance : A Normative Theory, 2nd edn
Chapter 24 : On Taxation and The Control of Externalities’, American Economic Review, 1972

Volume II : Taxation

Chapter 25 : Public Finance : A Normative Theory, 2nd edn
Chapter 26 : On The Theory of Tax Reform’, Journal of Public Economics, 1976
Chapter 27 : Horizontal Equity : Measures in Search of a Principle’, National Tax Journal, 1989
Chapter 28 : Distributive Justice in Taxation’, Journal of Economic Theory, 1988
Chapter 29 : Redistributive Taxation in a Simple Perfect Foresight Model’, Journal of Public Economics, 1985
Chapter 30 : Optimal Taxation and Public Production (Part II : Tax Rules)’, American Economic Review, 1971
Chapter 31 : The Design of Tax Structure : Direct vs : Indirect Taxation’, Journal of Public Economics, 1976
Chapter 32 : Complementarity and The Excess Burden of Taxation’, Review of Economic Studies, 1953
Chapter 33 : The Measurement of Waste’, American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, 1964
Chapter 34 : How Much Redistribution is Possible Through Commodity Taxes?’, Journal of Public Economics, 1983
Chapter 35 : Theory of Optimal Taxation’, Journal of Public Economics, 1986
Chapter 36 : Self-Selection and Pareto Efficient Taxation’, Journal of Public Economics, 1982
Chapter 37 : A Many Person Ramsey Tax Rule’, Journal of Public Economics, 1975
Chapter 38 : An Exploration in The Theory of Optimum Income Taxation’, Review of Economic Studies, 1971
Chapter 39 : Optimal Income Taxation : An Example with a U-Shaped Pattern of Optimal Marginal Tax Rates’, American Economic Review, 1998
Chapter 40 : Taxation and Savings : A Neoclassical Perspective’, Journal of Economic Literature, 1984
Chapter 41 : Simulating Fundamental Tax Reform in The United States’, American Economic Review, 2001
Chapter 42 : Income Tax Evasion : A Theoretical Analysis’, Journal of Public Economics, 1972
Chapter 43 : Towards a Theory of The Direct-Indirect Tax Mix’, Journal of Public Economics, 1994
Chapter 44 : On The Divergence Between "Ideal" and Conventional Income Tax Treatment of Human Capital’, American Economic Review, 1996

Volume III : Distribution

Chapter 45 : On The Measurement of Inequality’, Journal of Economic Theory, 1970
Chapter 46 : The Economics of Inequality, 2nd edn :
Chapter 47 : Distributional Tax Progressivity Indexes’, National Tax Journal, 1984
Chapter 48 : Ethical Measurement of Inequality : Some Difficulties
Chapter 49 : Aggregate Consumer Behavior and The Measurement of Social Welfare’, Econometrica, 1990
Chapter 50 : Efficiency Versus Equity in Economic Policy Analysis’, American Economist, 1985
Chapter 51 : Measuring Social Mobility’, Journal of Economic Theory, 1993
Chapter 52 : The Case Against Income Redistribution’, Public Finance Review, 2002
Chapter 53 : The Economics of Tagging’, American Economic Review, 1978
Chapter 54 : Pareto-Optimal Redistributions’, American Economic Review, 1969
Chapter 55 : Privately Provided Goods in a Large Economy : The Limits of Altruism’, Journal of Public Economics, 1988
Chapter 56 : Redistributive Taxation as Social Insurance’, Journal of Public Economics, 1980
Chapter 57 : Cash Versus Kind, Self-Selection, and Efficient Transfers’, American Economic Review, 1988
Chapter 58 : Understanding Welfare Stigma : Taxpayer Resentment and Statistical Discrimination’, Journal of Public Economics, 1992
Chapter 59 : The Design of Income Maintenance Programs’, Review of Economic Studies, 1995
Chapter 60 : The Incidence of The Corporation Income Tax’, Journal of Political Economy, 1962
Chapter 61 : Lifetime Versus Annual Perspectives on Tax Incidence’, National Tax Journal, 1991
Chapter 62 : Regression or Progression : The Taxing Question of Incidence’, Canadian Journal of Economics, 1984
Chapter 63 : What is Benefit Taxation?’, Journal of Public Economics, 2000
Chapter 64 : Equal Yield Tax Alternatives : General Equilibrium Computational Techniques’, Journal of Public Economics, 1977

Volume IV : Federalism

Chapter 65 : Tenable Range of Functions of Local Government’, Federal Expenditure Policy for Economic Growth and Stability
Chapter 66 : Fiscal Federalism (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972)
Chapter 67 : Public Finance : A Normative Theory, 2nd edn :
Chapter 68 : Income Distribution as a Local Public Good’, Journal of Public Economics, 1973
Chapter 69 : A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures’, Journal of Political Economy, 1956
Chapter 70 : Group Segregation and Optimal Jurisdictions’, Journal of Political Economy, 1974
Chapter 71 : A Critique of Tiebout's Theory of Local Public Expenditures’, Econometrica, 1981
Chapter 72 : The Theory of Local Public Goods
Chapter 73 : Assistance to The Poor in a Federal System’, Journal of Public Economics, 1987
Chapter 74 : Mobility and Redistribution’, Journal of Political Economy, 1991
Chapter 75 : Uncertain Income and Redistribution in a Federal System’, Journal of Public Economics, 1998
Chapter 76 : Estimating Equilibrium Models of Local Jurisdictions’, Journal of Political Economy, 1999
Chapter 77 : Theories of Tax Competition’, National Tax Journal, 1999
Chapter 78 : An Optimal Tax Approach to Fiscal Federalism’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1983
Chapter 79 : Fiscal Equity and Central Government Grants to Local Authorities’, Economic Journal, 1975
Chapter 80 : Income and Grant Effects on Local Expenditures : The Flypaper Effect and OTher Difficulties’, Journal of Urban Economics, 1982