Portale di Ateneo - En.Unibs.it

Course description
Public economics is a branch of economics that studies the public sector. We might say that a public economist is an economist who studies the policies of a benevolent Government aimed at fighting market failures. If you think that the Government is never benevolent and markets are perfectly efficient, public economics looks useless.
If however you believe that markets are not always perfect and that politicians sometimes care about their own re-election, the course of public economics is a good investment.
Public economics deals with the role, size and objectives of the public sector. Among them, market failure, the provision of public and merit goods, as well as distributional issues are the most prominent.

Knowledge and understanding
The course provides students with the knowledge of the main topics of public economics.
Applying knowledge and understanding
The student will be able to analyse the activities of different levels of government (national and local). To this end, the course not only focuses on main theories but also refers to real data provided by sovra-national entities (such as OECD, Eurostat and the IMF).
Making judgements
The student will be supported to work independently in evaluating public policies in different fields (e.g., environment, provision on goods and services as well as taxation).
Communication skills
Students will be shown how to deal with the most common activities of the public sector around the world. They will be encouraged to present short seminars to implement their ability to communicate results and policy implications in very short time.
Lifelong learning skills
The student matures the ability to move independently in search of the methodologies most suited to the problems of public economics that can be called upon to face in a professional context or for further study.