PUBLIC FINANCE

The course is among those characterizing the Degree programme in Business Administration and Management. The main aim of the course is to provide an overview of the issues concerning the State’s intervention in the economy. Emphasis will be placed on theoretical foundations of the economic analysis of the effects of government intervention and taxation. The course also provides tools for the economic analysis of the main Italian taxes.

1. Knowledge and comprehension skills:
1.1. Understanding the motivations of public intervention in the economy and how the collectivity can take into account objectives of equity and efficiency to make public choices and supply goods and services;
1.2. Understanding how public goods and externalities influence the choices of economic agents and tools used by the State to bring the economy back to efficiency;
1.3. Understanding the economic effects of taxes;
1.4. Understanding the characteristics and the functioning of the main Italian taxes.

2. Applied knowledge and comprehension skills:
2.1. Using social choice models to determine the efficiency and equity of public interventions;
2.3. Identifying the degree of progressivity and redistribution of different taxes;
2.4. Applying and critically evaluating income and consumption taxes.

3. Use of independent judgment:
3.1. to interpret the motivations of public intervention;
3.2. to understand the effects of taxes on agents' economic choices;
3.3. to consider economic issues through analytical methods.

Mandatory presequisites: see http://www.unive.it/pag/21318/

1. The public sector in Italy
2. Motivations for public intervention
2.1 Welfare Economics and social choice
2.2 Market failures
2.3 Public goods
2.4 Esternalities
3. Public sector revenues
3.1 Taxation theory: general aspects and basic concepts
3.2 Taxation: distributive principles
3.3 Issues in the design of personal income taxation
3.4 Distortionary effects of taxation
3.5 Tax incidence in partial equilibrium analysis
4. The italian tax system
4.1 National taxes
4.2 Regional and local taxes

- H.S. Rosen - T. Gayer, Scienza delle finanze, McGraw-Hill CREATE CUSTOM PUBLISHING, Quarta Edizione 2014 (EDIZIONE RIDOTTA PER CA' FOSCARI).
- P. Bosi - M. C. Guerra, I tributi nell'economia italiana, Il Mulino, Bologna, Ultima Edizione.
- Possible further teaching material made available during the course.

Written examination with open questions, multiple choice questions and exercises.

The course is organized in:
a) lectures,
b) classroom exercises,
c) individual study.
Students are encouraged to attend classes in an active way, reading the chapters of the book before coming to class and doing the exercises (available on the Moodle platform).

Moodle Page: https://moodle.unive.it/course/view.php?id=1597

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