Università Roma Tre

Part 1: The economic role of the state

1. Welfare economics
1.1 Efficiency criteria: Pareto efficiency; Hicks-Kaldor criterion
1.2 First fundamental theorem of Welfare economics
1.3 Second fundamental theorem of Welfare economics and the efficiency-equity trade-off

2. Social welfare and income redistribution
2.1 The Social Welfare Function
2.2 Utilitarianism and the rationale for income redistribution
2.3 The Rawlsian view and the Maximin criterion

3. Market failures
3.1 Public goods
3.2 Externalities
3.3 Natural monopoly
3.4 Imperfect information

4. Case study: the health care sector

Part 2: The economics of taxation

5. A taxonomy of government’s revenues

6. Principles of taxation
6.1 Horizontal and vertical equity
6.2 The benefit principle
6.3 The ability to pay principle
6.4 The choice of the tax base

7. Distributive effects of taxation: tax incidence
7.1 Overview
7.2 Incidence of taxes on commodity
7.3 Incidence of taxes on production factors

8. Taxation and economic efficiency
8.1 Taxation and consumers behaviour
8.2 Excess burden measurement in partial equilibrium
8.3 Tax evasion

9. Personal income tax

10. Corporate income tax

11. Wealth taxation

12. Consumption taxes

13. Fiscal federalism

14. International taxation

Rosen, H.S. and T. Gayer, Public Finance, Global Edition, McGraw-Hill Education, 2014

Musgrave, R.A and P.B. Musgrave, Public Finance in Theory and Practice, Fifth Edition, McGraw-Hill, 1989

Cullis, J. and P. Jones, Public Finance and Public Choice, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, 2009