Public economics and political economy are parallel fields: both study government organizations and political institutions to analyze and improve public policy issues.
Public economics and political economy are parallel fields: both study government organizations and political institutions to analyze and improve public policy issues. Public economists at Duke — both the Department of Economics and the Sanford School of Public Policy — study the economic implications of government policy, from analyzing their effects on human and economic behavior to determining their welfare and distributional effects. Political economists at the Departments of Economics and Political Science examine the reciprocal relationships between politics and markets, specifically the economic determinants of laws and political structures and their consequences on economic outcomes.