This weeklong, 3-credit hour mini-mester course will take place January 5-9, 2026 in the West Campus Social Sciences Building.
This course is seat-limited. APPLY HERE
Government policy can be examined through a variety of conceptual lens. Political scientists, sociologists, theologians, engineers, and economists are likely to propose very different policy recommendations for climate change or for school vouchers. Each discipline implicitly or explicitly adopts its own conceptual lens in looking at a given policy issue. To most economists, the preferred conceptual lens is applied welfare analysis – an extremely powerful analytical tool.
The goal of the Economic Policy Boot Camp is to teach students how to use this conceptual lens to critique existing or proposed policies. Students signing up for this Boot Camp should be prepared to have their own preconceptions challenged. They may even find themselves agreeing with some of the policy recommendations of both the folks on the Left and the Right of the political spectrum.
Day 1: Principles of Applied Welfare Analysis -- Dr. Jorge Garcia
This module introduces the framework of applied welfare economics for the analysis and evaluation of public policies. Welfare analysis concerns the assessment of how economic policies affect individual and social well-being, typically measured through changes in utility, income, or consumption. The module emphasizes how empirical evidence can be used to quantify these effects within a theoretically grounded framework. Core topics include welfare measurement, cost–benefit analysis, incidence and distributional analysis, and the estimation and interpretation of key welfare parameters such as willingness to pay, marginal excess burden, and deadweight loss.
The module combines lectures and guided discussions to develop a systematic approach for translating empirical results into welfare-relevant conclusions. Applications will consider policies in areas such as education, labor markets, and social assistance. By the end of the module, participants will be able to evaluate policy interventions in terms of their welfare consequences and interpret the associated efficiency and equity trade-offs.
Day 2: Tariffs—Under what conditions are they big, beautiful things? -- Dr. Lori Taylor
Starting with the 2 country 2 good model, we'll show graphically the increase in welfare resulting from trade. Then starting from a world of free trade, introduce tariff by Country 1 showing a welfare loss and introduce the retaliatory tariff by Country 2. Discussion will center on world tariff data since WWII over time and the increase in per-capita GDP.
Questions during this module include: When are tariffs justifiable? Should exports minus imports net to zero between countries? What about strategic military goods with potential wars between trading partners? Rationale for using tariffs to force relaxation of non-tariff barriers such as subsidies, etc? Under what conditions can U.S. tariffs force the importing country to pay the tariff? Recent empirical evidence will be examined.
Day 3: Pensions: Life Cycle Behavior, Saving and Retirement. -- Dr. Dennis Jansen
An introduction into the economic rationale for pensions based on the life cycle model will occur on day three. The types of pensions, risk, how financial markets help redistribute risk are all topics for discussion, including the role of the public sector in the provision of pensions, and pay-as-you-go versus fully funded pensions. The specifics of the U.S. Social Security program will be examined, including labor supply incentives, redistribution across income groups and across cohorts (intergenerational equity), and description of current demographic pressures on the Social Security System with some attention paid to pensions in other countries (Chile, Netherlands, Sweden). We will cover defined benefit versus defined contribution programs, and an overview of behavioral economics regarding saving and planning for the future, as well as the importance of portability in the modern economy. Students will take part in the evaluation of reform proposals for the US Social Security System.
Day 4: Health Care Issues -- Dr. Laura Dague
On day 4, we’ll dive into the fascinating world of health economics—a topic that touches everyone’s life in surprising ways. Health spending makes up nearly one-fifth of total U.S. output. Is that too much or too little? How can economic tools help us know? Students will get to see how economists think about health: not just as something we “consume” like a service, but also as an investment that affects our productivity, happiness, and even lifetime earnings. Using the Grossman model, we’ll explore how people make choices about their health and what drives those decisions. Why, even when we know it’s bad for us, do people make risky health choices? Health care presents especially complex market challenges: unlike typical goods, issues like uncertainty, asymmetric information, and externalities make market solutions in health care particularly tough and controversial. To put these ideas into action, you’ll team up for a lively health insurance risk simulation, testing your ability to manage uncertainty and make smart choices with incomplete information. Finally, we will think about the trade-offs involved in encouraging medical innovation while protecting patient health and whether price controls can ever actually be a useful tool. Expect plenty of discussion, debates, and surprises as we uncover why health care is such a hot topic in policy—and how economics can help us tackle its biggest challenges.
Day 5: Emissions Trading vs Regulation. -- Dr. Steve Puller
Emissions trading (cap-and-trade) and command-and-control regulation are alternative instruments for achieving a given pollution abatement target but differ in how they harness information and incentives. Under trading, a regulator sets a total emissions cap and allocates or auctions permits; firms trade until marginal abatement costs equal the permit price, equalizing marginal costs across sources and minimizing total compliance costs for a fixed environmental outcome. Traditional regulation (e.g., uniform technology or performance standards) can achieve the same emissions level but generally at higher cost as it does not allow low-cost abaters to do more while high-cost abaters do less. Relative performance depends on uncertainty: cap-and-trade fixes quantities (emissions) but lets prices vary, while an emissions tax fixes prices and lets quantities vary. Trading can enhance dynamic efficiency by rewarding innovation that lowers abatement costs.
Deliverables by Students: One paper showing how applied welfare analysis could be applied to a policy problem of their choice, due by January 23, 2026.
A dinner for all participants, including students, faculty and staff, will be held following paper submission.