Premium
Teaching Public Economics with Special Reference to Australian and US Cultures
Author(s) -
Abelson Peter
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
australian economic review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.308
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-8462
pISSN - 0004-9018
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8462.12318
Subject(s) - distrust , government (linguistics) , democracy , political science , sociology , social democracy , public administration , positive economics , social science , economics , law , politics , philosophy , linguistics
This article discusses how teaching public economics is, and should be, related to national cultures. The article shows how the US culture of distrust of government influences the two major US texts (Rosen and Gayer 2014; Gruber 2016) that dominate the teaching of public economics in Australia and elsewhere. By contrast, Stiglitz and Rosengard's (2015) text on public economics emphasises the role of government in providing social welfare. These traditions may be described as neo‐liberal and social democratic respectively. I conclude that the social democratic approach reflects Australian culture and is more appropriate for teaching public economics in Australian universities.