What Is Public Finance?
Getting Started With Public Finance Research
There are three principal databases that can be used to get started with research in Public Finance, Public Policy and the role of government in the economy. There are not the only ones. Auraria Library has about 300 databases, many of which can be used to focus on the financial, social, economic, governmental and cultural applications of economic theories.
Theoretical Tools in Economics
Economic theory, as we generally understand it, comes to us from the time of Adam Smith, John Baptiste-Say, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, and James Mill, all 18th and 19th century economists. These scholars are known as the Classical Economists. They and their theories were influenced by the great philosophers and scientists of the 17th and 18th centuries, namely, Isaac Newton, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf, Georg Hegel and A.J.R. Turgot to name only a few. A standard classic study about several of these economists is presented in Robert Heilbroner's, The Worldly Philosophers
It may be useful to remember that early economic theories were originally founded on both a theoretical and philsophical basis. Economics is now considered to be both a science and an art. This line of reasoning may be pursued further. Is Economics a positive or a normative science?
Image: US Federal Deficits or Surplus As a Percent of Receipts, 1900-2006 by 84user at Wikimedia Commons
See the discussion in Part 2 under Empirical Tools. In practice economic theories often contain "value propositions," which may have both a practical, positive basis and a prescriptive or normative basis.
Advancements have been made from the 19th and 20th centuries down to our current economies. Macroeconomic Keynesian theory, after John Maynard Keynes' work is important. (Major theorists include: John Hicks, Joseph Stieglitz, Paul Krugman). Neoclassical theories coming out of the Chicago School (Frank Knight, Ronald Coase, Milton Friedman), along with the Austrian School of Economics (Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek) are 19th and 20th century developments. New Keynesian economics, (N. Gregory Mankiw, David Romer, James Tobin, etc.) coming out of the Yale School and also MIT are as important.
New Economy Resources represents the latest world wide web guide for discovering new knowledge and understanding a range of reliable resources to leverage with regards to researching the New Economy. The world is rapidly changing as transparency, big data and access to data from large and diverse public databases becomes a reality. These resources are constantly updated by Subject Tracer(TM) Information Bots, and the latest resources for the new economy are available from: http://www.NewEconomyAnalytics.com/
Checklist of Economic Theories
Austrian School of Economics
Classical and Neoclassical Economics
Keynesian and NeoKeynesian Economics
John Rawls Theory of Justice
Capital Asset Pricing Model
Efficient Market Hypothesis
Prescott's Real Business Cycle Theory
Behavioral Finance and Behavioral Economics
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