Edited By: Rabah Amir, Helmuth Cremer, Myrna Wooders
Journal list menu
The Journal of Public Economic Theory publishes outstanding theoretical work in all areas of public finance. We are a broad-scope journal focusing on topics such as public goods, local public goods, club economies, externalities, taxation, growth, public choice, social and public decision making, voting, market failure, regulation, project evaluation, equity, and political systems.
Find out more about this journal.
Announcements
Call for Papers – Special Issue in Honor of Pierre Pestieau
The Journal of Public Economic Theory invites submissions to a special issue of the Journal in honor of Pierre Pestieau’s contributions to public and population economics. Potential contributors are encouraged, but not required, to present their paper at the 2025 APET conference which will be held in Lisbon, June 23–25, and hosted by ISEG (Lisbon School of Economics and Management). Please see here for more information on the submission process.
Deadline for submissions: January 5th, 2026
Call for Papers – Special Issue in Honor of Myrna Wooders
We invite papers for potential presentation at PET Lyon to a planned special issue of the Journal of Public Economic Theory in honor of Myrna Wooders' contributions to economics and game theory. The Guest Editors of the special issue, Rabah Amir, Edward Cartwright, Cuong le Van and Anne van den Nouweland are especially interested in works related to Myrna's contributions to the theories of club formation, local public goods, arbitrage in general equilibrium, Nash equilibrium in games with many players, discrimination, incomplete information, privacy, and industrial organization models with entry.
Deadline for submissions: April 15th, 2025
Call for Papers – Special Issue on CONTESTS: Theory and Applications
Deadline for submissions: April 15th, 2025
Call for Papers – Special Issue on Environmental Issues and Policy
Deadline for submissions: April 15th, 2025
Articles
Vaccine‐Preventable Diseases and Individual Behavior: Deterministic vs Stochastic Outcomes
-  2 May 2025
Why the Statutory Retirement Age Is Too Low in a Democracy
-  2 May 2025
The following is a list of the most cited articles based on citations published in the last three years, according to CrossRef.
The Simple Microeconomics of Public‐Private Partnerships
-  4-48
-  18 February 2014
GHG Targets as Insurance Against Catastrophic Climate Damages
-  221-244
-  27 March 2012
Choosing What to Protect: Strategic Defensive Allocation against an Unknown Attacker
-  563-587
-  31 July 2007
Knowledge Market Design: A Field Experiment at Google Answers
-  641-664
-  19 July 2010
Spillovers, subsidies, and second-best socially optimal R&D
-  1200-1220
-  11 November 2019
Latest news
Recent issues
- Volume 27, Issue 3June 2025
- Volume 27, Issue 2April 2025
- Volume 27, Issue 1February 2025
- Volume 26, Issue 6December 2024