Bibliographic Information

Fundamentals of public economics

Jean-Jacques Laffont ; translated by John P. Bonin and Hélène Bonin

MIT Press, c1988

Rev. English-language ed

  • : pb.:alk.paper

Other Title

Fondements de l'économie publique

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Note

Translation of: Cours de théorie microéconomique, v. 1. Fondements de l'économie publique

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

This text by one of Europe's leading economists covers a wide variety of public economics issues with great clarity and precision, illustrating them with a wealth of carefully-chosen examples and problems. Starting from theories of general equilibrium analysis, Laffont considers issues of market failure, collective decisionmaking, and distributional equity. He analyzes the important informational and motivational problems involved in planning solutions for market failures, and provides a rigorous justification for the theoretical foundations of public economics. Topics include the theories of externalities, public goods, collective choice, consumer surplus, cost-benefit analysis and/or theory of the second best, incomplete markets, and nonconvexities. For each Laffont begins with the classical foundations, moves on to consider the topic within a simple model of the economy, and concludes by integrating results from recent journal articles into this simple framework. In this way students are led to understand the classical tradition in the context of modern general equilibrium theory. The book concludes with eight problems with solutions, each interesting and rich enough to be considered a case study, and nine exercises without solutions; together they provide an excellent review of material covered in the text. The basic approach in each problem is to set up a general equilibrium model, discover the market failure by calculating the unfettered equilibrium, and develop an explicit planning solution. Jean-Jacques Laffont is Professor of Economics at the University of Social Sciences at Toulouse. Fundamentals of Economics may be used in either an advanced graduate-level course in public economics or in conjunction with a second volume forthcoming by the same author in a course in advanced microeconomics.

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Details

  • NCID
    BA03748064
  • ISBN
    • 9780262121279
    • 9780262512190
  • LCCN
    87021895
  • Country Code
    us
  • Title Language Code
    eng
  • Text Language Code
    eng
  • Original Language Code
    fre
  • Place of Publication
    Cambridge, Mass.
  • Pages/Volumes
    x, 275 p.
  • Size
    24 cm
  • Classification
  • Subject Headings
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