Public Economics 1: Taxation Policy (5 cr)

Code:
ECOM-440
Field:
Public Economics
Targets:
Master’s students Research Master's students PhD students
Organiser:
University of Helsinki - Economics
Instructor:
Jukka Pirttilä
Period:
Period 3
Format:
Lecture
Method:
Contact teaching
Venue:
Economicum
Enrollment:

In case of conflicting information consider the Sisu/Course/Moodle pages the primary source of information.

Aalto and Hanken economics students can enroll in their home university’s SISU! Further instructions can be found on the How to enroll page, also for other students.

Before taking and completing the course make sure that the credits can be counted towards your degree at your home university by checking which courses are included in your curriculum or by contacting your home university’s student/learning services.

  • To access the Moodle course area, use all the features and participate in the activities (assignments, discussions), you must have successfully registered for the course in Sisu and logged in with your UH user ID.
  • For more information on how to activate your UH user ID and register for a Moodle course area, click here.

This course covers key topics in modern public economics research, utilizing mainly theoretical but also empirical material. The course focuses on taxation. It is recommended that students also take the course Public Economics 2 to get a full picture of the field. 

After the course, student should be well versed in the basis of government intervention, and the impacts and the design of tax policies, and be able to use the material covered in own analytical work and research afterwards. Specifically, the course covers the following areas:

  • welfare theoretic underpinnings of government intervention
  • equity and efficiency, measurement of inequality
  • tax incidence and the deadweight burden of taxes
  • the impact of taxes on household behaviour: labour supply and taxable income elasticities
  • optimal income tax and transfer policies
  • corporate income taxation
  • tax evasion and avoidance
  • tax competition