"Public finance" (government finance) is the field of economics that deals with budgeting the revenues and expenditures of a public sector entity, usually government. Governments, like any other legal entity, can take out loans, issue securities and invest. Based on the taxing authority of the entity, they issue bonds such as tax increment bonds or revenue bonds. A "public bond" or security may give tax advantages to its owners.
Government efficiency - how efficient are governments at obtaining their objectives? how much of their expenditure actually goes to where it is intended? what types of waste exist?
Scope of government activities - what do governments spend money on? what should governments spend money on? what can be left to markets? Why governments should be concerned with externalities, public goods.
Externalities and Government Policy
Internalization of externalities
The Coase Theorem. The Coase theorem is the idea that government, with the power to establish the rights to use resources, can internalize externalities when transaction costs of bargaining are zero.
Income distribution - How will these government expenditures influence the incomes of one group relative to another group? Government programs like ?disaster relief? transfer wealth to people that have suffered a loss due to natural disaster. Social security transfers wealth from the young to the old. Engaging in a war transfers wealth to certain sectors of society. Public education transfers wealth to families with children in these schools. Public road construction transfers wealth from people that do not use the roads to those people that do (and to those that build the roads).
Income Security
Employment insurance
Health Care
Financing
Income redistribution effects of the various types of taxes and types of borrowing
Publicexpenditure is determined by political will of the leading forces in the state: their priorities, their desired state model, and their interpretation of current economic and political phase.
Publicexpenditure is also told to crowd-out investment, possibly through an interest rate increase, further leading, in a floating exchange rate regime, to a currency appreciation.
Publicexpenditure may turn out to be pro-cyclical or anti-cyclical depending on the political and institutional attitude toward public deficit, as we said.
Publicexpenditure role and impact: The wide quality and cost effectiveness differentials in education programmes explain the lack of significance of the of education expenditure variable in econometric evidence.
Theory and practice of public policy in health: beneficiary incidence surveys reveal an anti-poor bias in publicexpenditure in the health sector in most developing countries, and a concentration of resources on curative care of non-catastrophic conditions which, in urban areas, may compete with established private providers.
Publicexpenditure has often been mis-allocated (relative to the objective of child mortality reduction), inter alia by substituting for private expenditure: there has been no clearcbenefit to health from primary health care facilities.
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