《财政学教学资料》Tools of Positive Analysis（2003版）.pptVIP

LOGO Tools of Positive Analysis Chapter 2 Contents Tools of Positive Analysis 1 Methods of empirical analysis 2 Concluding remarks 3 Tools of Positive Analysis Why is it so hard to tell what’s going on with government actions? Consider lowering income tax rates. Will lowering taxes increase work effort and labor supply? Unlike the physical and natural sciences, difficult to perform carefully controlled experiments on the economy. Oftentimes, there is no “control group” or “comparison group” for a policy. Causation versus correlation In order for us to infer that government action X