Public Finance and Public Policy by Jonathan Gruber - Sixth Edition, 2019 from Macmillan Student Store

Public Finance and Public Policy

Sixth  Edition©2019 Jonathan Gruber

About

Rigorous theory, cutting-edge empirical evidence, and abundant policy-oriented applications
 
We are at a pivotal point in history with respect to the role of government in the U.S, with fundamental disagreements over enormous government policies that are shaping our lives.  In 2010, the most significant health care reform in decades, the Affordable Care Act, passed with no Republican support; eight years later it has been significantly weakened and under attack as alternatively too intrusive, and not sufficiently ambitious.  2017 saw the passage of an enormous piece of tax legislation, the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, with no Democratic support; a year later it remains highly unpopular and its impacts are under dispute.
 
These are just two examples of the debates roiling our state, local and federal governments about the proper role of government.  Should the government intervene to combat global warming, and if so how?  Should the federal government play a larger role in local education decisions?  What should we do about the enormous long run fiscal costs of our social insurance programs such as Medicare and Social Security?  And what reforms might be needed to the underlying political system that is leading to many of our current policy stalemates?
 
One cannot begin to answer questions such as this without a clear understanding of the proper role of government in the economy.  The goal of this book is provide you with that understanding.  To do so, I consider the broad range of policy areas addressed by governments in the U.S. and around the world, ranging from externalities (such as environmental damage), to public goods (such as education), to social insurance programs (including a rich discussion of the primary driver of the costs of such programs, health care spending), to taxation. This latest edition includes many of the exciting new topics of public policy debates, such as drug legalization, congestion pricing, and universal basic income.
 
Within each area, I explain the key policy issues in three ways to ensure the richest possible understanding.  The first is through the language of economic theory, using intuitive description, graphs and mathematics to help you understand how economic tools are used to address these types of questions.  The second is through examples and applications, using vivid real-world descriptions to show you how these policy issues play out in reality and the lessons we can learn from that experience.
 
Finally, one point I emphasize in particular in this text is an understanding of how Public Finance economists gather and interpret data.  At no other time has it been so important to know the facts, to distinguish facts from falsehoods, and think critically about problems and politics. Doing so requires access to scientifically valid evidence on the public policy questions of the day.  Through this book you will learn how experts in the field gather such evidence, and how it gets used to make key decisions.

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Table of Contents

PART I Introduction and Background
1       Why Study Public Finance? 
2       Theoretical Tools of Public Finance 
3       Empirical Tools of Public Finance 
4       Budget Analysis and Deficit Financing 
PART II Externalities and Public Goods
5       Externalities: Problems and Solutions 
6       Externalities in Action: Environmental and Health Externalities 
7       Public Goods 
8       Cost-Benefit Analysis 
9       Political Economy 
10     State and Local Government Expenditures 
11     Education 
PART III Social Insurance and Redistribution
12     Social Insurance: The New Function of Government 
13     Social Security 
14     Unemployment Insurance, Disability Insurance, and Workers’ Compensation 
15     Health Insurance I: Health Economics and Private Health Insurance 
16     Health Insurance II: Medicare, Medicaid, and Health Care Reform 
17     Income Distribution and Welfare Programs 
PART IV Taxation in Theory and Practice
18     Taxation: How It Works and What It Means 
19     The Equity Implications of Taxation: Tax Incidence 
20     Tax Inefficiencies and Their Implications for Optimal Taxation 
21     Taxes on Labor Supply 
22     Taxes on Savings 
23     Taxes on Risk Taking and Wealth 
24     Taxation of Business Income 
25     Fundamental Tax Reform and Consumption Taxation 
 
Glossary G-1
References R-1
Index I-1

Jonathan Gruber

Dr. Jonathan Gruber is a Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught since 1992.  He is also the Director of the Health Care Program at the National Bureau of Economics Research, where he is a research Associate.  He is a co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Health Economics. Dr. Gruber received his B.S. in Economics from MIT and his PH.D. in Economics from Harvard.  He has received and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, a FIRST award from the National Institute on Aging, and the Kenneth Arrow Award for the Best Paper in Health Economics in 1994.  He was also one of the 15 scientists nationwide to receive the Presidential Faculty Fellow Award from the National Science Foundation in 1995.  Dr. Gruber was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2005, and in 2006, he received the American Society of Health Economists’ Inaugural Medial for the best health economist in the nation ages 40 and under.  Dr. Gruber’s research focuses on the areas of public finance and health economics.  He has published more than 125 research articles and has edited 6 research volumes.
 During the 1997-1998 academic year, Dr. Gruber was on leave from MIT, serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the U.S. Treasury Department.  He was a key architect of Massachusetts’ ambitious health reform effort, and in 2006, he became an inaugural member of the Health Connector Board, the main implementing body for the effort.  In that year, he was named the nineteenth-most powerful person in health care in the United States by Modern Healthcare Magazine.  He acted as a consultant on several presidential campaigns and is considered by the Washington Post to be one of the “most influential” health care experts in America.