This course will describe and analyze public policy as the making of laws and rules and their implementation by government. Public policy will be analyzed as an alternative to private markets for making collective decisions. The US began in 1787 as a minimal state providing mainly collective goods such as national defense, with markets making most of the decisions about the allocation of resources. The course will be organized around the general presumption that a justification for government activity is to do things that markets do not do well, that is, to remedy ¿market failures.¿ Among the policy areas to be considered are environmental protection, science and technology policy, competition policy, trade policy, health policy and social security. The course will consider the possibility that government intervention to remedy market failures can make things worse as well as better.