Public Economics

Research and development (R & D) leads to innovation, and innovation leads to technological change. Technological change, in turn, is the primary driver of economic growth. Public/private partnerships – cooperative relationships among industry, government, and/or universities – leverage the efficiency of R & D and are thus a critical aspect of a nation’s innovation system.

This volume explores the professional ethics of addresses the varied ethical needs of the professional economists and public policy professionals.

This book applies the basic ideas and models of economics to develop a single transactions framework to explain the key institutional arrangements across the whole range of public sector organization: the regulatory commission, the executive tax-financed bureau, and the state-owned enterprise. This book also explores the link between agency form and administrative function, agency independence from the legislature, the rights extended to private interests to influence administrative decision making, the role of civil service arrangements that are so often seen as simply frustrating efficiency and responsiveness, and the boundary between public and private sectors. This book should be of value to those with a practical interest in public administration as well as students of political science, public administration, economics, and public policy.

We are all economists—when we work, buy, save, invest, pay taxes, and vote. It repays us many times over to be good economists. Economic issues are active in our lives every day. However, when the subject of economics comes up in conversation or on the news, we can find ourselves longing for a more sophisticated understanding of the fundamentals of economics.