What is the right level of tax progression? What are the consequences of basic income? How should universities be financed? What is the right way to support poor people? How should the pension system be financed? How limiting are the external constraints on public finance? What is the degree of inequality in Finland? Should local communities be supported by the government and if yes, how? How should usage of common goods such as natural resources be regulated?
Public Economics Research Group
Public economics provides a framework for thinking about the planner’s or the government’s intervention to the market. To this end, microeconomic models are used to assess how various market failures, inefficiencies, and inequalities can be corrected.
Much of modern public economics is related to inequality. The market economy does not necessarily produce a socially desirable distribution of income, and government intervention is again needed. Public economics research can inform policy discussion about the impacts of inequalities, how effective public policies are in reducing them, and how policymakers can address possible tradeoffs between economic efficiency and distributional equity.
At the core of public economic analysis are various policy measures, including taxes, provision of public goods, and regulatory actions. Research in contemporary public economics is increasingly empirical. Impact evaluation methods and sufficient statistics approaches are used to attempt to credibly estimate the impact of policy instruments and reforms on taxpayer and individual behavior.
Members
Jukka Pirttilä
Chair of the group, Professor
Kwabena Adu-Ababio
Member, PhD student
Marja-Liisa Halko
Member, University Lecturer
Kristiina Huttunen
Member, Research Professor
Arttu Kahelin
Member, PhD student
Arttu Kauhanen
Member, PhD student
Eugen Koev
Member, PhD student
Aliisa Koivisto
Member, PhD student
Kaisa Kotakorpi
Member, Research Professor
Matti Liski
Member, Professor
Juuso Mäkinen
Member, PhD student
Topi Miettinen
Member, Professor
Kimmo Palanne
Member, PhD student
Tuomas Pekkarinen
Member, Research Professor
Tuukka Saarimaa
Member, Professor
Roope Uusitalo
Member, Professor
