Foundations in Public Economics

David A. Starrett (Author)

9780521348010, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 24 June 1988

332 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.538 kg

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.

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.

Subject Areas: Economic theory & philosophy [KCA]