Economics and Public
Policy
ECON 3007
Dr John Wilson
Welcome
• ECON 3007 Prerequisites:
• Econ 2010 Economic Analysis of Business Decisions
Welcome
• My details:
Dr John Wilson
[email protected]
WL3-57
Ph: 8302 0207
Office Hours: Please email for a time. Meetings via Zoom.
Welcome
• Workshop
• 2 parts – part one more like a lecture followed by (part 2) questions
• Come prepared and ready to discuss and talk!
• Textbook: Stiglitz and Rosengard (2015), Economics of the Public
Sector 4th Ed
• Online version now available (see link course home page)
Assessment
1. Essay (2000 words) due 13/9/23 (50%)
2. Exam (2.5 hour)(50%) – Still online also – NOT RPNow More details
to follow regarding this.
The course
• This is not a course in politics!
• Will consider how to evaluate public policy from an economic
perspective
• In particular in terms of aggregate welfare improvements
• There are normative positions in some of this but we will try and abstract
from these
• Cover a wide variety of issues. Key though is the toolkit!
A more detailed overview
• The focus is policy – but we need a toolkit by which to analyse various
forms of policy
• A brief summary of what we will cover:
• The nature of markets and Pareto Efficiency
• Market Failure
• Public Goods
• Public Policy Evaluation
• Perspectives on welfare maximization
• CBA
• Government failure (public choice theory)
• Some ‘field’ topics: Health, Environment, Public Finance and Taxation
