As the official journal of the Association of Public Economic Theory (APET), the Journal of Public Economic Theory is committed to stimulating research in the rapidly expanding field of public economics. Manuscripts are evaluated based on their creativity and rigor, with the journal setting no limits on the complexity of the techniques used.

The journal focuses 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. It covers a broad spectrum of theoretical approaches, including general equilibrium theory, game theory, evolution, experimentation, control theory and dynamics, simulation, axiomatic characterization, and first-order and comparative static methods.