Econ of the Public Sector

The purpose of the course is to think about public policy issues through an economic lens. We will explore the basic economic foundations of individual decision-making and discuss the ways in which economists hypothesize that individuals respond to the incentives embedded within public policies. We will pay particular attention to the nature and detail of existing public policies, and use economic analysis to predict how these policies might influence behavior. We will also explore some of the relevant empirical literature on a set of policy topics, to see how these predictions hold up.