Rationale
The conference will feature a keynote lecture, paper presentations, and a panel on the future of public sector economics research and practices. Relevant topics include but are not limited to:
- Government and market failure in perspective, size of the public sector in perspective
- Evolution of tax systems and individual taxes – achievements of optimal taxation, missed opportunities, remaining gaps
- Evolution of social insurance systems, current tensions and sustainability challenges, political economy of reforms
- Interplay of public and private sector in health care, long-term care, education, R&D, culture
- Perspectives on old and new economic roles of the public sector – public investment, climate change mitigation, defense sector, economic and social infrastructure, new industrial policy
- Macro fiscal policy then and now – and its likely future
- Development of empirical methodology, causal identification methods, big data and machine learning, combination of microsimulations and administrative data, insights from behavioural economics
- Modernisation of public sector practices – data and service delivery digitisation, modernisation of tax administration, potential and risks of AI in the public sector
- Institutional developments – spread of fiscal transparency, accountability, responsibility, citizen participation, civil service reforms.