Public Finance and Public Policy
MIT's course applies microeconomic tools to the question of when and how government should intervene in markets. Topics include the government's response to global warming, school choice for K-12 students, Social Security versus private retirement accounts, public versus private health insurance, and the design of income tax rates for individuals and corporations. Students work through the economic rationale for government intervention, the actual scope of that intervention in the United States, and how private actors adjust their behavior in response. Materials come from MIT OpenCourseWare and typically include lecture notes, problem sets, and readings drawn from public finance literature. The course is aimed at students who already have grounding in basic microeconomics and want to apply it to live policy debates rather than abstract theory. No certificate is offered, but all course materials are free to use.