The class meets Tuesdays 4-6:30 pm in M-16 in Littauer. The TA is Matteo Paradisi (mparadisi@g.harvard.edu).

Course Syllabus

Lecture Notes: (many lectures inspired by Emmanuel Saez' graduate PF course notes)

Lecture 1: Introduction to Graduate Public Economics
Lecture 2: Optimal Income Taxation Part 1
Lecture 3: Optimal Income Taxation Part 2
Lecture 4: Labor Supply Responses to Taxation
Lecture 5: Taxable Income Elasticities
Lecture 6: Optimal Transfers
Lecture 7: Social Preferences
Lecture 8: Tax Enforcement
Lectures 9 and 10: Capital Taxation
Lecture 11: New Dynamic Public Finance
Lecture 12: Social Security and Retirement

Section Material:

Section 1: Labor Supply
Section 2: Introduction to Optimal Taxation
Section 3 and 4: Mirrlees Model and Pareto Efficient Taxation
Technical Note on Hamiltonians
Section 5: Income Effects and Bunching
Section 6: Optimal Transfers
Section 7: Optimal Top Income Taxation
Section 8: Minimum Wage
Section 9: Capital Taxation and Tax Smoothing
Section 10: Education Policies and Capital Taxation

Problem Sets:

Problem Set 1
Problem Set 2
Problem Set 3
Problem Set 4