Public economics is the study of government policy through the lens of economic efficiency and equity. Public economics builds on the theory of welfare economics and is used as a tool to improve social welfare. Public economics provides a framework for thinking about whether or not the government should participate in economic markets and to what extent it should do so. Microeconomic theory is utilized to assess whether the private market is to provide efficient outcomes in the absence of governmental interference; this subject encompasses a host of topics including market failures and the creation and implementation of government policy. Broad methods and topics include: the theory and application of public finance analysis and design of public policy distributional effects of taxation and government expenditures analysis of market failure and government failure. Emphasis is on analytical and scientific methods and normative-ethical analysis, as distinguished from ideology. Examples of topics covered are tax incidence, optimal taxation, the theory of public goods.

The Journal of Economic Literature classification codes are one way categorizing the range of economics subjects. There, Public Economics, one of 19 primary classifications, has 8 categories, they are listed below with JEL-code links to corresponding available article-preview links of The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics Online and with similar footnote links for each respective subcategory if available: JEL: H – Public Economics JEL: H0 – General JEL: H1 – Structure and Scope of Government JEL: H2 – Taxation and Revenue JEL: H3 – Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents JEL: H4 – Publicly Provided Goods JEL: H5 – National Government Expenditures and Related Policies JEL: H6 – National Budget and Debt JEL: H7 – State and Local Government. In 1971, Peter A. Diamond and James A. Mirrlees published a seminal paper which showed that when lump-sum taxation is not available, production efficiency is still desirable; this finding is known as the Diamond–Mirrlees efficiency theorem, it is credited with having modernized Ramsey's analysis by considering the problem of income distribution with the problem of raising revenue.

Joseph E. Stiglitz and Partha Dasgupta have criticized this theorem as not being robust on the grounds that production efficiency will not be desirable if certain tax instruments cannot be used. One of the achievements for which the great English economist A. C. Pigou is known, was his work on the divergences between marginal private costs and marginal social costs. In his book, The Economics of Welfare, Pigou describes how these divergences come about:...one person A, in the course of rendering some service, for which payment is made, to a second person B, incidentally renders services or disservices to other persons, of such a sort that payment cannot be extracted from the benefited parties or compensation enforced on behalf of the injured parties. In particular, Pigou is known for his advocacy of what are known as corrective taxes, or Pigouvian taxes: It is plain that divergences between private and social net product of the kinds we have so far been considering cannot, like divergences due to tenancy laws, be mitigated by a modification of the contractual relation between any two contracting parties, because the divergence arises out of a service or disservice to persons other than the contracting parties.

It is, possible for the State, if it so chooses, to remove the divergence in any field by "extraordinary encouragements" or "extraordinary restraints" upon investments in that field. The most obvious forms which these encouragements and restraints may assume are, of course, those of bounties and taxes. Externalities arise when consumption by individuals or production by firms affect the utility or production function of other individuals or firms. Positive externalities are education, public health and others while examples of negative externalities are air pollution, noise pollution, non-vaccination and more; the government can intervene in the market, using an emission tax for example to create a more efficient outcome. Pigou describes as positive externalities, examples such as resources invested in private parks that improve the surrounding air, scientific research from which discoveries of high practical utility grow. Alternatively, he describes negative externalities, such as the factory that destroys a great part of the amenities of neighboring sites.

In 1960, the economist Ronald H. Coase proposed an alternative scheme whereby negative externalities are dealt with through the appropriate assignment of property rights; this result is known as the Coase theorem. Public goods, or collective consumption goods, exhibit two properties. Something is non-rivaled if one person's consumption of it does not deprive another person, a firework display is non-rivaled - since one person watching a firework display does not prevent another person from doing so. Something is non-excludable. Again, since one cannot prevent people from viewing a firework display it is non-excludable. Conceptually, another example of public good is the service, provided by law enforcement organizations, such as sheriffs and police. Cities and towns are served by only one police department, the police department serves all

Blanche Descartes was a collaborative pseudonym used by the English mathematicians R. Leonard Brooks, Arthur Harold Stone, Cedric Smith, W. T. Tutte; the four mathematicians met in 1935 as undergraduate students at Trinity College, where they joined the Trinity Mathematical Society and began meeting together to work on mathematical problems. The pseudonym originated by combining the initials of the mathematicians' given names to form BLAC; this was extended to BLAnChe. The surname Descartes was chosen as a play on the common phrase carte blanche. Over 30 works were published under the name, including whimsical poetry and mathematical humour, but some serious mathematical results as well. Notably, the foursome proved several theorems in mathematical tessellation. In particular, they solved the problem of squaring the square, showing that a square can be divided into smaller squares, no two of which are the same, they discovered "Blanche's Dissection", a method of dividing a square into rectangles of equal area but different dimensions.

They modelled these using abstract electrical networks, an approach that yielded not only solutions to the original problem, but techniques with wider applications to the field of electrical networks. They published their results—under their own names—in 1940. Tutte, believed to have contributed the most work under Descartes's name, kept up the pretense for years, refusing to acknowledge in private that she was fictitious."Descartes" published on graph colouring, Tutte used the pseudonym to publish the fourth known snark, now called the Descartes snark. She published the poem "Hymne to Hymen" as a gift to Hector Pétard on the day of his wedding to Betti Bourbaki. Descartes, Blanche. "Why are Series Musical?". Eureka. 27: 29–31. Archived from the original on 2010-04-01. Retrieved 2010-04-15. Descartes, Blanche. "Review of Bondy & Murty's Graph theory with applications". Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. 83: 313–315. Doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1977-14245-6. Ungar, Peter. Amer. Math. Monthly 61, no.

5, 352–353. Brooks, Smith and Tutte at squaring.net Brooks, Smith and Tutte at squaring.net When was the Bourbaki Wedding? by Lieven Le Bruyn On Blanche Descartes, Richard K. Guy, Gathering 4 Gardner 2017 Nicolas Bourbaki Arthur Besse John Rainwater G. W. Peck

Sholom Secunda was an American composer of Ukrainian-Jewish descent. He was born in 1894 as Shloyme Sekunda in Aleksandria city, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire to the family of Abraham Secunda and Anna Nedobeika. In 1897 the family moved to the Black Sea port city of Mykolaiv, where they opened an iron bed factory. At age 12 Shloyme played Abraham/Avrom in Abraham Goldfaden's Akeydes Yitskhok and Markus in The Kishef-Makherin. In 1907, like numerous other Jews of the Russian Empire, he emigrated to United States with his family after a series of pogroms that rocked the region in 1905. In January 1908 the family emigrated to New York as steerage passengers on board the SS Carmania and were inspected and detained on Ellis Island. In New York City, young Sholom became a noted child khazn; when his voice changed he studied music and taught piano worked in comedy theater in the chorus until his song "Amerike" was accepted by Jennie Goldstein, who sang it with great success in Kornblum's Unzere kinder.

In 1913, after studying at the Institute for Musical Arts in New York City, he worked at the Odeon Theater as chorist and composer. He began working in "Lyric theater" as choir director as director and orchestrator of the old "historic" operetta repertoire. In 1918, he became a naturalized US citizen. In 1919-1920 he earned his first solo composer's credits with S. H. Kon's The Rabbi's Daughter and Free Slaves, he worked in Philadelphia's Metropolitan Opera House with director Boris Thomashevsky. He composed for Di Yidishe Shikse by A nakht fun libe by Israel Rosenberg. An exhaustive list of his many works can be found in the Leksikon fun Yidishn Teater. In 1932 he wrote the melody for the popular song "Bay mir bistu sheyn" on the lyrics of Jacob Jacobs for the musical performed at the Parkway Theatre in Brooklyn, which became a major hit for the Andrews Sisters. Together with Aaron Zeitlin he wrote the famous Yiddish song "Dos kelbl", covered by many musicians, including Donovan and Joan Baez.

Along with Abraham Ellstein, Joseph Rumshinsky, Alexander Olshanetsky, he was one of the "big four" composers of his era in New York City's Second Avenue National Theater scene in the Yiddish Theater District. Secunda worked at another theater founded by Maurice Schwartz, Yiddishe Art Theater, earning $75/week for conducting an orchestra. In 1938 he gave an interview to the Courier-Post about Bei Mir Bistu Shein. Secunda married the former Betty Aimer, they had two sons and Eugene, he died on June 13, 1974 in New York City, was buried in Montefiore Cemetery in Springfield Gardens, Queens. 1930: Sailor's Sweetheart 1931: A Cantor on Trial 1939: Kol Nidre 1939: Tevya 1940: The Jewish Melody 1940: Her Second Mother 1940: Motel the Operator 1940: Eli, Eli 1950: God and Devil 1950: Catskill Honeymoon I Would if I Could, musical Esterke, musical Guide to the Sholom Secunda Papers in the Fales Library of NYU Sholom Secunda on IMDb Opera Glass Shlimazl on YouTube Let be blessed his memory. Interview of Sholom Secunda to the Camden Courier, January 26, 1938.

Sholom Secunda at Find a Grave