Economics 560

(Gateway course in Graduate Public Finance)

Latest news: The readings folder contains the following papers:

Donald McCloskey, Economical writing Economic Inquiry 24(2) April 1985: 187-222.

James Buchanan and Craig Stubblebine, Externality Readings in Welfare Economics 199-212. Originally published in Economica 29 1962 371-384.

Samuelson, Paul A. "The pure theory of public expenditure" The Review of Economics and Statistics v36 1954 387-89

Notes on the Clark tax for incentive compatible preference revelation

Notes on "The Excess Burden of Taxation: Technical Analysis" Appendix 11 from some unknown book

Joel Slemrod "Optimal Taxation and Optimal Tax Systems" Journal of Economic Perspectives 4:1 Winter 1990 157-178

Peter Smith. "Lessons from the British Poll Tax Disaster." National Tax Journal 44:4(2) 421-436

The Economist's Voice special edition on tax reform (2005): http://www.bepress.com/ev/vol3/iss1/

Keeping up with the news: I'd like everyone to keep up with current issues in public finance, not only in the academic press, but in the popular media. Consequently, as a bi-weekly exercise, please collect one such article that you have found, and write an accompanying one page (strict limit) analysis of the issue in the article to submit along with the article.