Public Economics Courses

ECON 652: Public Economics I
Topics include social insurance theory, social security, unemployment insurance, disability insurance, government intervention in the health care and education sectors, externalities, and public goods. We will cover a mix of theoretical and empirical evidence while considering evidence for the US and other countries.

ECON 752: Graduate Public Economics II
Topics include issues in the design and implementation of tax and transfer systems. The course discusses theoretical and empirical considerations of behavioral responses to tax and transfer systems and the optimal design of such programs. Other topics covered include legalized gambling, household saving behavior and an introduction to issues in behavioral public finance.

Related Course

ECON 626: Empirical Microeconomics
Empirical techniques that are particularly valuable in the analysis of microeconomic data. Topics include panel data, nonlinear optimization, limited dependent variables, truncated, censored and selected samples, the analysis of natural experiments, and quantile regression.

Field Requirements in Public Economics

Major field: ECON 652, 752 and 626. Average grade of B+ or better in the courses, and field paper. Field papers will be due February 1 of the third year. Papers will be returned to students no later than March 1. Papers that do not pass can be revised and resubmitted no later than June 1.

The faculty considers passing the major field as a commitment to work with you as a thesis writer, so there are high standards that must be met by the paper. If your original proposal or draft lacks sufficient potential, the faculty will tell you so and insist that you choose another topic.

Minor field: ECON 652 and 752. Average grade of B+ or better in courses.

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