Teaching Students to "Do" Public Choice in an Undergraduate Public Sector Course

This paper discusses one approach to using writing assignments in an undergraduate public economics to get students actively involved in doing public choice. Our goal is to provide an overview of the course and its writing assignments with an emphasis on how the scaffolding of assignments helps contribute to the development of interesting and publishable ideas in public choice. A course in public economics provides a good opportunity for an instructor to develop student interest in applied public choice.