Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Nova School of Business and Economics

Public Finance

Code

2177

Credits

3,5

Teacher in charge

Ana Fontoura Gouveia

Teaching language

English

Objectives

This course will endow you with the tools to understand the economics of taxation: why do we have taxes? What are their consequences? Are there better taxes than others? Are there better ways to design taxes?

Prerequisites

N/A

Subject matter

The course does not deal with the reasons for government intervention (have mostly been learnt in Microeconomic Policy Analysis: market failure, public goods and externalities), nor with the expenditure side of the public sector (there are several courses devoted to that: education, health, poverty).

We will deal with currently important policy issues which you bump into when you open a newspaper: how should the government raise a given amount of taxes? What are the efficiency and equity consequences of tax policy? What are the main challenges in the design of taxes? How are the tax and expenditure responsibilities of the government allocated across government levels in our world of multi-layered government levels (local, national, supra-national)?

Bibliography

The course will be based on selected charapters of:

  • Gruber "Public Finance and Public Policy", Worth Publishers, 2nd edition, 2009

  • Stiglitz "Economics of the Public Sector", Norton publishers

  • Hindriks and Myles, "Intermediate Public Economics", MIT Press 2006.

  • Selected research papers and charapters of the Handbook of Public Economics

    • Lecture slides, problem sets and all the relevant material for the course is available on Moodle.

    Teaching method

    We shall meet twice weekly for 80 min classes. Classes are devoted to the presentation of the material by instructor and to the discussion and presentation of policy topics by the students.

    Two take-home problem sets will allow the students to learn the concepts and the analytical modelling of the issues

    Students will have to read policy relevant papers and write one report on one of them - this will allow them to train their capacity for critical analysis and to derive policy implications from their knowledge

    In addition, each students is expected to contribute to the blog https://novaworkboard.wordpress.com/, the blog of the Nova Econ students. There will be a total of 2 contributions throughout the term.

    Evaluation method

    ASSESSMENT

    Paper review

    Critical report on one policy relevant paper (list circulate in the first classe)

    Blogging (15%)

    Two contributions for the Econ Master´s students blog http://novaworkboard.wordpress.com

    Two take home problem sets (15%) - group assignement

    Final exam (50%)

    Courses