Public Finance--while continuing to follow an innovative approach that is both theoretical and empirical--is now completely updated to reflect major changes in its key topics

This textbook equips instructors and students with an overview of the existing literature so that the latter can attain an overall understanding of macroeconomic and microeconomic public finance. The literature on public finance has grown dramatically with theoretical studies and empirical analysis, and much of the focus has been on macroeconomic effects of public services.

In the past twenty years, the field of public finance has undergone a dramatic evolution, with a growing interest in the study of transfer programs and social insurance. The field has also moved from predominantly theoretic approaches to putting more emphasis on high-quality empirical work, both in the traditional areas of tax and direct spending and in the newer areas of transfer programs and social insurance. Jonathan Gruber's Public Finance and Public Policy is the first text to acknowledge those changes. Written specifically with those developments in mind, it brings the realities of contemporary public finance to the classroom in ways no other text can match.