Public Finance and Public Policy

Think clearly about problem, policy and politics

This textbook is guided by the author’s contagious belief that at no other time has it been so important to know the facts, to distinguish facts from falsehoods, and to be thinking clearly about problem, policy, and politics. Gruber covers the fundamentals of public finance with an emphasis on responses to Covid-19, highlighting the variety of decisions that the government had to make and the controversies they engendered. Based on rigorous theory and cutting edge empirical evidence students are given policy oriented applications to issues relevant to their everyday lives.

Features

• Carefully structured to support students to organize concepts in their mind, with quick hint boxes, questions to keep in mind and key terms boldfaced throughout the text for easy definition.
• Accessible presentation of statistics using visual graph representations emphasising to students why they should care about policies.
• Mathematic appendices allow for a deeper understanding of the mathematics guided by instructor experts without overwhelming students as they learn the concepts.
• Passionate pedagogy incorporates empirical evidence into every chapter emphasising the importance of research integrity in dedicated sections.

About the Author

Dr. Jonathan Gruber is the Ford Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has taught since 1992. He is also the former Director of the Health Care Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the former President of the American Society of Health Economists. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and the Econometric Society. He has published more than 180 research articles, has edited six research volumes, and is the author of Public Finance and Public Policy, a leading undergraduate text, Health Care Reform, a graphic novel, and Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream (with Simon Johnson). In 2006 he received the American Society of Health Economists Inaugural Medal for the best health economist in the nation aged 40 and under.

During the 1997-1998 academic year, Dr. Gruber was on leave as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the Treasury Department. From 2003-2006 he was a key architect of Massachusetts’ health reform effort, and in 2006 became an inaugural member of the Health Connector Board. During 2009-2010 he served as a technical consultant to the Obama Administration and worked with the Administration and Congress to help craft the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In 2011 he was named “One of the Top 25 Most Innovative and Practical Thinkers of Our Time” by Slate Magazine. In both 2006 and 2012 he was rated as one of the top 100 most powerful people in health care in the United States by Modern Healthcare Magazine. In 2020 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship.