4.0

credits

Average Course Rating

Policy decisions require difficult trade-offs of costs and benefits; there is no such thing as a free lunch. Hence, the course will use specific policy areas – including health care, transportation and infrastructure, international aid and development, education, and environmental issues – as examples to provide students with the concepts and tools of cost-benefit analysis to analyze the role of government intervention, its justification, opportunity costs, and implications for efficiency, fairness and effectiveness. The course will cover key theories and concepts that underpin most discussions of public policy on the role and financing of the government sector, including public goods (both national and global), externalities and market failure, tax policy, social welfare economics, market structure, monetary and fiscal policy. We will then place cost benefit within the broader public finance framework. Using these concepts, the course will highlight some of the challenging real-world public policy issues confronting governments in different parts of the world. Students will learn how to develop and apply cost-benefit analysis techniques to the evaluation of public policies. This course is open to enrollment by MIEF students only.