Introduction to Public Policy & Institutional Analysis

Lecture 01: What is a “fair” start?

 Dinh Vu Trang Ngan

Required reading: 

1. Malcolm Gladwell (2008) Outliers: The Story of Success, Chapter 1, “The Matthew Effect,” New York: Little, Brown and Company.

Suggested reading:

1. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett (2010) The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, Chapter 8, “Education Performance,” Penguin Books.

Lecture 02: How Do We Study Public Policy?

 Jonathan Pincus

Required reading:

1. Jonathan Pincus (2010) “Policy Case Study: Milk Price Registration and Regulations in Vietnam: Will it Lower Milk Prices?” Fulbright School, September.

2. Vietnamnet series on milk pricing, “Người tiêu dùng Việt Nam đang 'đốt' tiền mua sữa,”  Articles 1-5.

Lecture 03: The Division of Labor and Gains from Trade

 Jonathan Pincus

Required reading:

1. Greg Linden, Kenneth L. Kraemer, Jason Dedrick (2007) “Who Captures Value in a Global Innovation System? The case of Apple's iPod,” Personal Computing Industry Center (PCIC), University of California, Irvine, June. 

Lecture 04: What prices can’t tell

 Dinh Vu Trang Ngan

Required reading:

1. John Cassidy (2009) How Markets Fail, New York: Farrar, Straus and Girous. Chapter 10, “A Taxanomy of Failure”.

Lecture 05: Hidden Information

 Dinh Vu Trang Ngan

Required reading:

 1. John Cassidy (2009) How Markets Fail, New York: Farrar, Straus and Girous. Chapter 12, “Hidden Information and the Market for Lemons”.

Lecture 06: Path dependence - US health care reform and Vietnam hospital pricing

 Jonathan Pincus

Required reading:

1. Vietnamet Series entitled “Trước thềm dự thảo tăng viện phí,” Articles 1-2.

Suggested reading:

1. Atul Gawande (2009) “Getting There from Here: How Should Obama Reform Health Care?” The New Yorker, January 26.

Lecture 07: Making Choices

 Dinh Vu Trang Ngan

Required reading: 

1. Steven Landsburg (1993) Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life, Free Press. Chapter 16 - 18: “Why Popcorn Costs More at the Movies and Why the Obvious Answer Is Wrong,” “Courtship and Collusion: The Mating Game,”  “Cursed Winners and Glum Losers: Why Life Is Full of Disappointments”.

Lecture 08: The Endowment Effect

 Jonathan Pincus

Required reading:

1. Dan Ariely (2008) Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions, New York: Harper Collins. Chapter 7, “The High Price of Ownership: Why We Overvalue What We Have.”

Suggested reading:

1. Daniel Kahneman, Jack L. Knetsch and Richard H. Thaler (1991) “Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5:1, 193-206.

Lecture 09: Justice: How do we know what to do?

 Dinh Vu Trang Ngan

Required reading:

1. Michael Sandel (2009) Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Chapter 1: “Doing the right thing.”

Lecture 10: Fairness and Efficiency

Dinh Vu Trang Ngan

Required reading:

 1. Michael Sandel (2009) Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Chapter 5: “What matters is the motive/ Immanuel Kant,” Chapter 6: “The case for equality.”

 Jonathan Pincus

Required reading:

1. Eric Morris (2009) “London Congestion Charge [blog]” New York Times, October 13.

Suggested reading:

1. Jonathan Leape (2006) “The London Congestion Charge,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20:4, 157-176.

Lecture 12: Policy implementation and “networked government”

 Jonathan Pincus

Required reading:

1. “Harvard bàn về khủng hoảng giáo dục đại học VN,” (2009) Tuanvietnam.net, http://www.tuanvietnam.net/

Lecture 13

Groups 1-3

Lecture 14

Groups 4-6

Lecture 3: Self-interest and the division of labor

Readings:

1. Adam Smith, Self-interest vs. benevolence as incentives: a selection from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book I chapter II. Edwin Cannan, ed. 1904. Library of Economics and Liberty

Suggested reading:

1. Joseph Stiglitz (1998) Distinguished lecture on Economics in Government: "The Private Uses of Public Interests: Incentives and Institutions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring, 3-22.