Raj Chetty

Econ 2450a: Graduate Public Economics Lecture Slides

by Raj Chetty and Gregory A. Bruich

This is the first of two courses in the graduate public economics sequence at Harvard. This one-semester course covers basic issues in the optimal design of tax and social insurance policies, with emphasis on combining theoretical models with empirical evidence. Topics include efficiency costs and incidence of taxation, income taxation, transfer and welfare programs, public goods and externalities, optimal social insurance (excluding social security), and welfare analysis in behavioral models.

The course consists of 24 lectures, each lasting 1.5 hours. The slides and reading list are divided into seven parts:

Part 1: Introduction

Part 2: Tax Incidence [3 lectures]

Part 3: Efficiency Cost of Taxation [3 lectures]

Part 4: Optimal Taxation [5 lectures]

Part 5: Income Taxation and Labor Supply [4 lectures]

Part 6: Social Insurance [5 lectures]

Part 7: Public Goods and Externalities [4 lectures]

Files available for download:

Lecture slides in pdf format [For faster downloading, see the lite version with lower image quality]
Reading list in pdf format
Source files in Scientific Workplace format and .doc file for reading list
- this zip file contains .rap files that require the beamer package, available for free download here

To download these files, right click and select save target as.

We would like to thank Jon Gruber, Day Manoli, Emmanuel Saez, and many other colleagues whose comments and lecture notes contributed to the development of these slides. Please contact Gregory Bruich (gbruich 'at' fas.harvard.edu) or Raj Chetty (chetty 'at' fas.harvard.edu) if you have any questions or suggestions.