About This Course
Public Finance and Public Policy offers a rigorous, hands‑on exploration of how governments raise revenue, allocate resources, and design policies that shape social and economic outcomes. Taught by MIT’s renowned economist Jonathan Gruber, this course blends economic theory with real‑world governance, giving students the analytical tools used by policymakers, budget directors, and public administrators at every level of government.
Students begin by examining the foundations of public economics—taxation, public goods, externalities, social insurance, redistribution, and the economics of government intervention. Through case studies and data‑driven analysis, learners explore how policies influence behavior, markets, and community well‑being. The course emphasizes the trade‑offs inherent in public decision‑making: efficiency versus equity, short‑term needs versus long‑term investment, and local autonomy versus federal coordination.
Designed with future mayors, governors, policy analysts, and civic leaders in mind, the course focuses on the practical challenges cities and states face. Students model the effects of income, sales, and property taxes; evaluate the economics of public goods such as parks, transit, and emergency services; and analyze how social programs affect poverty, health, and employment. Budgeting becomes a living exercise as students learn how governments balance competing priorities under fiscal constraints.
Experiential learning is central. Students participate in tax‑policy simulations, cost‑benefit analysis labs, and public‑spending allocation exercises. A highlight of the course is the municipal budget simulation, where learners step into the role of city officials tasked with funding schools, infrastructure, public safety, and social services while maintaining fiscal responsibility. Teams design a tax reform proposal, evaluate its economic impact, and defend their choices using evidence‑based reasoning.
Field‑based components deepen the connection between theory and practice. Students take virtual tours of state budget offices, municipal finance departments, and public policy research centers. They review real tax codes, budget documents, and policy memos to understand how decisions are made inside government institutions. These experiences illuminate the complexity of public finance and the importance of transparent, data‑driven governance.
Hands‑on projects include designing a public finance reform, conducting a tax‑incidence analysis, and completing a case study on a major policy issue such as housing affordability, transportation funding, climate regulation, or public‑health investment. By the end of the course, students will understand how governments use economic tools to improve social welfare—and how they can apply public‑finance reasoning to lead effectively in city and state governance.
Course Staff
Chief Educational Troublemaker
Michael Williams
Michael Williams is the Chief Educational Troublemaker at World Mentoring Academy — a title he earned the hard way: by spending more than a decade poking, prodding, and occasionally drop‑kicking the traditional education system into the future. In 2010, long before “MOOC” became a Silicon Valley buzzword, Michael was building a free global college from a backpack, a stubborn belief in open learning, and whatever Starbucks Wi‑Fi he could borrow. The Orange County Register profiled him as a “homeless by choice educator to the world,” documenting his 12‑hour days assembling university‑level courses from MIT, Yale, NPTEL, and Stanford — all without charging a cent.
While the big platforms eventually traded “open” for “subscription,” Michael never budged. World Mentoring Academy remains one of the last true free MOOCs on Earth, offering more than 1,000 courses without paywalls, upsells, or fine print.
Michael’s LinkedIn essays — including “Harvard & MIT, Follow a Homeless Educator,” “The Future Won’t Wait for Academia,” and “Future of Education May Have Ancient Roots?” — have earned him a reputation as a futurist with calluses, someone who can explain why AI is breaking the job market, why teens are the workforce pipeline no one is using, and why the next education revolution will look more like ancient Athens than a modern lecture hall.
Across every WMA course, Michael appears as your unofficial guide, mentor, instigator, and occasionally your friendly academic arsonist — the guy who hands you the map, the compass, and the confidence to build a future that doesn’t depend on debt, gatekeeping, or waiting for institutions to catch up.
He helps learners find their place in a world that’s changing faster than universities can update their syllabi — and he does it with humor, humanity, and a refusal to accept that opportunity should be rationed.
If education needs a troublemaker, Michael is happy to volunteer.
