Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

A quick primer on consumer demand -- Perfect competition and Pareto optimality -- Forms of the social welfare function -- External effects and the market mechanism -- The theory of pure public goods -- Topics in the theory of public goods -- The effects of taxes on savings -- Taxation and labor supply -- The effects of taxes on investment behavior -- Taxation and risk taking -- The theory of tax incidence -- Tax incidence in dynamic models -- Some results in commodity taxation -- Aspects of income taxation -- Topics in the theory of taxation -- Tax reform -- Pricing in the public sector -- International aspects of taxation -- Tax incentives and corporate taxation -- Global public goods -- Cost-benefit analysis and randomized evaluation -- Environmental taxation and emission trading sachemes -- Issues in fiscal federalism -- Grants and taxes in federal countries.

In recent times not only have traditional areas of public economics such as taxation, public expenditure, public sector pricing, benefit cost analysis, and fiscal federalism thrown up new challenges but entirely new areas of research and inquiry have emerged. This second edition builds upon the strengths of the previous edition and incorporates results of research on new areas such as global public goods, environmental taxation and carbon permits trading and the complexities of corporate taxation in a rapidly globalizing world.
The book is a modern and comprehensive exposition of public economics. It includes extended discussions on topics of particular interest to developing countries and covers subjects such as: taxation in an economy with a large informal sector, the challenges of using VAT, the use of randomized evaluation, theory of public expenditure and public goods including global public goods and incentive effects of taxation and tax incidence.