Foundations in Public Economics / Edition 1

by David A. Starrett

Overview

In this book, Professor David Starrett organizes within a single framework the major theoretical foundations of modern public sector economics. He presents a unified treatment of market failure that encompasses externalities, pure public goods, local public goods and natural monopolies. Professor Starrett then develops and assesses the efficacy of the various planning procedures - including representative voting, benefit cost analysis, incentive compatible design mechanisms and the free market. He devotes attention to both national and local issues, with the aim of identifying those methods that are best suited to each arena separately. Special attention is paid to financial arrangements, techniques for eliciting necessary information that is not readily available, and identification of biases that will result from incorrect procedures. This study will be useful to graduate students and economists who are interested in public finance or welfare economics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521348010
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/24/1988
Series:	Cambridge Economic Handbooks
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	332
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 8.98(h) x 0.87(d)

Table of Contents

Preface and acknowledgments; Notation; Part I. Scope and Limitations: 1. Introduction; 2. Social objectives and direct decision making; 3. Market decentralization; 4. Market decentralization; 4. Theory of collective goods; Part II. Decision Making in a Mixed Economy: 5. Planning mechanisms; 6. Models of a mixed economy; 7. Government budgeting and fiscal decentralization; 8. Public pricing and optimal-commodity taxation; Part III. First-Order Project Analysis: 9. Decompositions and general theory of second best; 10. Principles of shadow pricing; 11. Local public goods; 12. Intertemporal contexts with uncertainty; 13. Identifying shadow values: hedonic methods and capitalization; Part IV. Evaluating Large Projects: 14. search for exact measures; 15. Surplus approximations; 16. Practical methods for large-project evaluation; 17. Peak-load problem; Epilog; References; Author index; Subject index.