Optimal Taxation, Public Economics, Paper 7.

The aim of these lectures is to provide a non-technical introduction to the theory of optimal taxation and to discuss applications of this theory to current policy issues. By the end of the course, students should be able to use tools of optimal taxation to analyse policy proposals in a graphical way. Students should also have some understanding of the mathematics underlying the models. Finally, students should have knowledge of current policy debates and know the benefits and limitations of what economics can contribute to the debate.

The course outline is available here. In addition, PowerPoint presentations will be made available as we go along. Finally, two sets of supervision questions  are available.

Useful Links

HM Treasury

Institute for Fiscal Studies

The Pension Report

The Mirrlees Review

  Lecture 1 (PowerPoint).
  Lecture 2 (PowerPoint)
  Lecture 3 (PowerPoint)
  Lecture 4 (PowerPoint) 
  Lecture 5 (PowerPoint)
  Lecture 6 (PowerPoint)
  Lecture 7 (PowerPoint)
  Lecture 8 (PowerPoint)

Note on The optimal tax mix and on why MTRs should be non-negative.
Note on Public Pensions.

         Supervision questions

           Supervision 1 (Optimal taxation I)
           Supervision 2 (Optimal taxation II)

A complete set of answers is available for supervisors from Silvana Dean.