Empirical Public Finance

Professor: Armour
Units: 0.5
Elective (fulfills a Research, Analysis, and Design: Empirical Analysis or Modeling Human Systems distribution requirement)

The principal objective of this course is to explore empirical evidence on the role of government intervention in the economy, focusing on tax and social program policies. The course is designed around lectures providing the foundations for each topic area, followed by reading important recent research, with a particular focus on distributional outcomes. This approach is intended to allow students to learn both the subject matter and techniques necessary to critically analyze existing research in the field and to produce original research in public economics, the latter of which is the major goal of the course.