Synopses & Reviews
This is the first English-language edition of Nicola Acocella's highly successful undergraduate text, originally published in 1994. Aimed at advanced undergraduate and graduate students, Acocella's emphasis is on the persistence of market failures and the full range of issues connected to public intervention and regulation. Very impressive in its scope, (including welfare economics, social choice, public economics as well as macro- and micro-economic theory and policy), Foundations of Economic Policy is user friendly with a comprehensive index, summaries, key word lists and pathways designed for both rigorous and intuitive study.
Review
"Professor Nicola Acocella has provided an illuminating and challenging account of the foundations of economic policy. His analysis covers the established ground as well as providing new departures, and the book is a rich addition to the existing literature." Amartya Sen, University of Cambridge
Synopsis
This is the first English-language adaptation of Nicola Acocella's best-selling undergraduate textbook Fondamenti di politica economica: Valori e tecniche, originally published in 1994. Aimed at intermediate and undergraduate students who have completed an introductory course in economics, Foundations of Economic Policy is a classroom tested book which brings an exciting new approach to the teaching of economics by taking subjects which are normally compartmentalised within welfare, macro, micro and applied economics and considering them within a unifying framework based on the persistence of market failures and the full range of issues connected to them, including public intervention and regulation. Foundations of Economic Policy is the most comprehensive, user-friendly and innovative economics textbook currently available.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction; Part I. Defining Social Preferences: 2. Individual preferences and social preferences; 3. The Pareto principle and 'new welfare economics'; Part II. Social Choices, Government and the Market: 4. Theories of justice, welfare functions and the social optimum; 5. Social preferences and institutions; 6. Market failures: microeconomic aspects; 7. Market failures: macroeconomic aspects; Part III. Normative and Positive Theory of Economic Policy: 8. The normative theory of economic policy; 9. 'Non-market' failures: elements of a positive theory of economic policy; Part IV. Microeconomic Intervention: 10. Microeconomic policies for efficiency; 11. Redistributive policies and optimal taxation; 12. Social choice and cost-benefit analysis; Part V. Macroeconomic Intervention in a Closed Economy: 13. Macroeconomic objectives and monetary policy; 14. Macroeconomic objectives and fiscal policy; 15. Incomes and price policies; Part VI. Macroeconomic Intervention in an Open Economy: 16. Monetary systems and exchange rate regimes; 17. Balance of payments policies; 18. Economic policies in an open economy; Part VII. Problems of 'Regime' in Government Action, Domestic and International: 19. Consistency in public choice; Index; References.