Choice Review

In writing Economics and Tax Policy Case has, as advertised, produced a short text on elementary microeconomic theory applied to tax policy-long on the introductions theory and short on its application to taxation issues. The theory is concisely and accurately presented, but a reader with an introductory economics course will see nothing new. The tax applications, meanwhile, are appended to the theory in a few short, final chapters. The applications are simplistic and outdated when compared to the more sophisticated treatments to be found in modern undergraduate public finance texts that assume little more than an exposure to first principles (e.g., Harvey S. Rosen's Public Finance, 1985, and Joseph E. Stiglitz's Economics of the Public Sector, 1986). The Case book is thus useful only to readers with little or no background in economics and those interested in the very rudiments of tax analysis.-G.W. Yohe, Wesleyan University