JEM031 - Public Finance A
| Credit: | 6 |
|---|---|
| Credit ETCS: | 6 |
| Hours weekly: | 2/2 |
| Status: | English Magisterský - Economics and Finance - alternativní A Masters - all Masters - European Economic Integration and Economic Policy - obligatory Masters - Finance, Financial Markets and Banking - alternative A Masters - General Economic Theory - obligatory Semester - winter |
| Obligatory courses: | |
| Recommended courses: | JEB025 - Public Finance JEM080 - Political Economics A - NOT AVAILABLE IN SUMMER 2010 |
| Course supervisors: | PhDr. Martin Gregor PhD, ČEZ Chair |
| Teachers: | PhDr. Martin Gregor PhD, ČEZ Chair |
| Assistants: | |
| Schedule: | Tuesday, 8:00-9:20 room 105, 9:30-10:50 room 314 |
| Announcements: | On Tuesday Sept 29th, we start with lecture at 9:30. The seminar at 8:00 is cancelled. |
| Literature: | Hindriks, J., Myles, G.D. (2006). Intermediate Public Economics, MIT Press. HM, IES library (EII-1796) disposes with a sufficient number of long-loan copies of the textbook Batina, R.G., Ihori, T. (2005) Public Goods: Theories and Evidence, Springer BI, IES library EII-1660 Leach, J. (2004) A Course in Public Economics, Cambridge University Press. LJ Myles, G.D. (2002) Public Economics, 3rd ed., Cambridge University Press, GM Salanié, B. (2003) The Economics of Taxation. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. BS |
| Description: | The course introduces covers upper intermediate and advanced topics in the economics of the public sector. Part I is devoted to public expenditures: the optimal provision of public goods, redistributive motivation in public provision of private goods, and optimal user fees. Part II studies taxation: tax incidence, effects of taxes on labor supply, optimal commodity taxation and income taxation. Part III investigates into the effects of mobility for competition between governments. It studies tax and spending competition on the international and subnational levels, and selected topics in local public finance. |
| Content: | Part I: Public expenditures 1. Pure public goods a) Public provision. The first-best provision of a pure public good. In a pure market economy with privately provided public goods, does GDP measure welfare? Rigorous derivation of the Samuelson condition. Public intermediate goods. Modification of Samuelson condition for the position of the economy relative to the optimal growth path. Public goods in a simple OLG model. Optimal financing of public goods through distortionary taxation: the second-best provision. Pigou effect. Can the second-best amount exceed the first-best amount? Measuring willingness to pay: closed-circuit TV broadcasting, whooping crane, and tree densities. Hedonic prices and market data. Lessons for applied cost-benefit analysis. HM 101-110 BI 9-12, 20-21, 29-33 GM 282-301 Oakland, W. (2001), Theory of Public Goods. Handbook of Public Economics, Vol. 2 (9), Sections 1-3.3, available as PDF Brent, R. J. (2006), Public goods. In: Applied Cost Benefit Analysis. Ch. 6, available as PDF b) Market provision. Provision under small/large number of participants. Monopoly seller under exclusion: uniform vs. discriminatory prices. Crowding-out effect of public transfers on private charity: neutrality of transfers. Income invariance, policy neutrality. Fund-raising games: contribution and subscription campaigns. Economics of philanthropy. Aggregation technology and non-cooperative provision of global public goods. HM 124-128, 132-136 BI 115-121 BS 163-166 LJ 175-184 Oakland, W. (2001) Theory of Public Goods, Handbook of Public Economics, Vol. 2 (9), Section 4, available as PDF 2. Impure public goods and private goods a) User fees for club goods. Goods with fixed and variable utilization. Membership fee only. User fee only. Two-part tariff. The optimal provision when quality is a public good and quantity is a private good. Distributional objectives. User prices. Case studies on user prices. HM 143-154 BI 306-307 LJ 191-198 Mueller, D. (2003). Public Choice III, Cambridge University Press, 183-198, available as PDF Brent, R. J. (2006). User fees, in: Applied Cost Benefit Analysis. Ch. 12.1-3, available as PDF Winston, C. (2006). Government Failure vs. Market Failure: Microeconomic Policy Research and Government Performance. AEI-Brookings Center for Regulatory Studies, Ch. 1, 2, 5, 6, available as PDF b) Redistribution through public expenditure. Publicly provided private goods. Besley, Timothy and Stephen Coate (1991) Public provision of private goods and the redistribution of income, American Economic Review, 81, 4, 979-984 Boadway, Robin and Maurice Marchand (1995) The use of public expenditures for redistributive purposes, Oxford Economic Papers, 47, 45-59 3. Contracting and information issues in the public sector. Contracting in the public sector. Economics of PPP (public-private partnership). Iossa, Elisabetta and Martimort, David, The Simple Micro-Economics of Public-Private Partnerships (December 2008). CEIS Working Paper No. 139 Andreas Bentz, Paul A. Grout, Maija L. Halonen, What Should Governments Buy from the Private Sector–Assets or Services? October 12, 2004, mimeo. Part II: Taxation 4. Effects of taxes a) Overview of tax systems. Taxation in CEEC and the EU. Taxation in developing countries with a large informal sector. Recent changes in the tax revenue composition. The Economist, Buttonwood: Be thankful they don’t take it all, September 5th 2009 Roger Gordon, Wei Li. Tax structures in developing countries: Many puzzles and a possible explanation. Journal of Public Economics 93 (2009) 855–866 Bernardi, L. et al (eds.), 2005. Tax Systems and Tax Reforms in New EU Member States. Routledge, London and New York, available as PDF Eurostat 2008. Taxation trends in the European Union: Data for the EU Member States and Norway. Eurostat Statistical Books, available as PDF b) Tax incidence. Economic vs. legal (statutory) incidence. Partial vs. general equilibrium models. Income and substitution effects and incidence measurement. Tax incidence in perfectly and imperfectly competitive economy. BS 15-22 HM 238, 444-447 GM 337-346 Fullerton, D., Metcalf, G. E., Tax incidence, Handbook of Public Economics Vol. 4 (26), available as PDF Kotlikoff, L., Summers, L., Tax incidence, Handbook of Public Economics, Vol. 2 (16), available as PDF Viren, M. (2009). Does the Value-Added Tax Shift to Consumption Prices? AUCO Czech Economic Review, 3 (2), 123-142. 5. Commodity taxation a) Optimal commodity taxation. Ramsey rule. The inverse elasticity rule(s). Diamond-Mirrlees Production Efficiency Lemma. Marginal reforms of tax rates. Violation of Ramsey principles for optimal commodity tax under income tax. Taxation of leisure complements and leisure substitutes. Ad valorem vs. specific taxes under imperfect competition. HM 447-469 BS 58-78, 187-192 GM 99-129, 346-361 Kaplow, L. 2008. Taxing Leisure Complements, NBER Working Paper No. 14397. b) Consumption taxation. Uniform versus excise consumption tax. VAT. Distributional impacts of consumption taxation. Keen, M., 2007. VAT attacks! International Tax and Public Finance 14 (4), 365-382. Warren, N. (2008) A Review of Studies on the Distributional Impact of Consumption Taxes in OECD Countries, OECD Social Employment and Migration Working Papers, No. 64 6. Income taxation a) Optimal (labor) income tax. Mirrlees economy. Weak separability in utility vs. optimal non-linear taxation. Partial equilibrium models of income taxes. The comprehensive income tax. Taxing the rich. The negative income tax. HM 477-506 BS 79-110, 147-158, 171-176 GM 131-164 Hausman, J., Taxes and Labor Supply, Handbook of Public Economics, Vol 1 (4), available as PDF Jon Gruber, Emmanuel Saez, The elasticity of taxable income: evidence and implications, Journal of Public Economics, Volume 84, Issue 1, April 2002, Pages 1-32 c) Tax reforms. Critique of existing tax systems. Income taxes vs. consumption taxes. The reform problem. Marginal social cost of taxation. Flat tax. GM 165-192 Slemrod, Joel; Bakija, Jon M., (1996) Taxing Ourselves: A Citizen's Guide to the Great Debate Over Tax Reform, MIT Press, available as HTML b) Corporate taxation. Input and output taxes. Profit tax. Investment incentives. Financial policy: debt vs. equity. Payout policy. GM 227-254 Auerbach, A., Taxation and Corporate Financial Policy, Handbook of Public Economics, Vol. 3 (19), available as PDF John O'Doherty, Government defends business tax regime, Financial Times 29 August 2007 Auerbach, A.., Devereux, M., and H. Simpson (2008) Taxing Corporate Income, NBER Working Papers 14494 Special issue of Oxford Review of Economic Policy (2008) Vol. 24, No. 4: corporate taxation Part III: International and local public finance 7. Tax competition a) Pros and cons of tax competition. Perfect and imperfect competition. Perfect and imperfect mobility. Impossibility to redistribute from capital under perfect competition. Commodity taxation: origin vs. destination principle. The strategic advantage of being small. Vertical tax externality and tax overlap. Tax exporting. Tax competition as remedy to dynamic inconsistency. MH 569-599 James R. Hines, Jr. and Lawrence H. Summers, How Globalization Affects Tax Design, NBER Working Paper No. 14664, January 2009 Persson, T., Tabellini, G. (2000) Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy, MIT Press, 305-312, 325-330. IES library John Douglas Wilson, 1999, Theories of tax competition, National Tax Journal; 52, 2 Edwards, Jeremy and Michael Keen (1996) Tax competition and Leviathan, European Economic Review, 40, 113-134 Gordon, Roger H. and James R. Hines Jr. (2002) International taxation, Vol. 4 (28), Handbook of Public Economics, available as PDF b) Recent issues in international business taxation. Residence versus source-based taxation for greenfield investments and M&A. Common EU tax base with formula apportionment. Johannes Becker, Clemens Fuestz, Source versus Residence Based Taxation with International Mergers and Acquisitions, Centre for Business Taxation, University of Oxford, 16th February 2009 Wolf Wagner, Sylvester Eijffinger (2008) Efficiency of capital taxation in an open economy: tax competition versus tax exportation. International Tax and Public Finance 15 (6) 8. Local public finance a) Local spending. Decentralization tradeoff due to spillovers vs. heterogeneity. Oates’ decentralization theorem. Tradeoff due to closeness vs. duplication. Excessive decentralization. Effective and ineffective yardstick competition. Tiebout sorting. Strategic spending competition. HM 543-558 Oates, W. A. (2005) Toward A Second-Generation Theory of Fiscal Federalism, International Tax and Finance, 12, 349–373. Oates, W. A. (2006) On the Theory and Practice of Fiscal Decentralization, IFIR Working Paper No. 2006-05 b) Fiscal federalism. Revenue sharing as insurance of region-specific shocks. Intertwined redistribution and insurance in tax-and-transfer systems. Welfare shopping and Tiebout hypothesis in social systems. When the poor chase the rich. Intergovernmental transfers. Flypaper effect. Fiscal equalization. Matching grants: revenue-type and expenditure-type; conditional and unconditional grants. Fiscal federalism in the Czech Republic. MH 569-599 Rubinfeld, D., The Economics of the Local Public Sector, Handbook of Public Economics, Vol. 2 (11), available as PDF Robert P. Inman. The Flypaper Effect, NBER Working Paper 14579 |
| Seminar: | We have 12 weeks, each with two 80-minute sessions. In first weeks, I’ll reserve the slots for lectures only, whereas by the end of the semester, we fully switch to seminars (with presentations). Each week, I’ll assign 1 point for attendance to each who is present full time of the lecture and the seminar. Apologies are accepted only with a written proof of medical examination. |
| Examination dates: | Final exam: February 3, 12:00 at 314 Make-up: February 16, 9:00 at 314 |
| Course requirements: | Midterm 15% Presentation 15% Paper 30% Final exam 30% Attendance 10% |
| Downloadable: | 01 Public goods (final version, with corrections) 02 User fees (final version, with corrections) 03 Tax incidence (final version, with final corrections) 04 Commodity taxation (final version, with corrections) 05 Tax competition (with corrections) 06 Decentralization (with corrections) 07 Optimal taxation Evaluation of term papers (15 Feb) Evaluation of term papers (sample) Exam 1 (sample solution) Exam 2 (sample solution) Midterm (sample solution) Presentations (Nov 23) Results (preliminary, 13 Feb) Syllabus (28 Sept) |