Public Finance

Richard Tresch earned a bachelor’s degree in 1965 from Williams College and a doctorate in economics in 1973 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a teaching assistant prior to joining Boston College. He joined the Boston College faculty in 1969, and during his 49-year-long career in the college, Dr. Tresch has served as the Chairman of the Department of Economics, Director of Graduate Studies, and Director of Undergraduate Studies. Currently, he is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Boston College. In 1996, he was chosen as the Massachusetts Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He was one of 585 national entrants in the foundation’s U.S. Professors of the Year Program, which salutes outstanding undergraduate instructors, with the award recognized as one of the most prestigious honors to be bestowed on professors. Dr. Tresch, a member of the American Economic Association, has served on the board of editors of the American Economic Review and contributed to the New England Journal of Business and Economics and Public Finance. Moreover, he is the editor of a fourvolume major reference work on public sector economics.

Part I: Introduction: The Content and Methodology of Public Sector Theory 1. Introduction to Normative Public Sector Theory 2. A General Equilibrium Model for Public Sector Analysis 3. First-Best and Second-Best Analysis and the Political Economy of Public Sector Economics

Part II: The Theory of Public Expenditures and Taxation—First-Best Analysis 4. The Social Welfare Function in Policy Analysis 5. The Problem of Externalities--An Overview 6. Consumption Externalities 7. Production Externalities 8. Global Warming: An Application of Externality Theory 9. The Theory of Decreasing Cost Production 10. The First-Best Theory of Taxation 11. Applying First-Best Principles of Taxation—What to Tax and How

Part III: The Theory of Public Expenditures and Taxation: Second-Best Analysis 12. Introduction to Second-Best Analysis 13. The Second-Best Theory of Taxation in One-Consumer Economies with Linear Production Technology 14. The Second-Best Theory of Taxation with General Production Technologies and Many Consumers 15. Taxation Under Asymmetric Information 16. The Theory and Measurement of Tax Incidence 17. Expenditure Incidence and Economy-Wide Incidence Studies 18. The Second-Best Theory of Public Expenditures: Overview 19. Transfer Payments and Private Information 20. Social Insurance: Medical Care 21. Social Insurance: Social Security 22. Externalities in a Second-Best Environment 23. Decreasing Costs and the Theory of the Second-Best—The Boiteux Problem 24. General Production Rules in a Second-Best Environment 25. Behavioral Public Sector Economics

Part IV: Fiscal Federalism and International Public Finance 26. Optimal Federalism: Sorting the Functions of Government Within the Fiscal Hierarchy 27. Optimal Federalism: The Sorting of People within the Fiscal Hierarchy 28. The Role of Grants-in-Aid in a Federalist System of Governments 29. International Public Finance