IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecm/feam04/470.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the Costs and Benefits of a Mixed Educational Regime

Author

Listed:
  • Ryuichi Tanaka

Abstract

This paper studies the costs and benefits of a mixed educational regime in which tax-financed public schools and tuition-financed private schools coexist. In the model, households are not allowed to borrow for education, but have a choice to educate their children in a public or a private school. The tax rate is determined by majority vote. The future income of children depends on the quality of education and stochastic ability. Using a numerical method, I calibrate the model to the U.S. economy, calculate the long-run outcomes and compare them with those in a purely public or private educational regime, consisting solely public or private schools. Simulations reveal that in the mixed regime long-run mean income is higher and long-run income inequality is lower than in the private regime. They also reveal that although there is no significant difference in long-run mean income between the mixed and the public regime, the tax rate and the quality of public education are significantly lower and thus long-run income inequality is higher in the mixed regime than in the public regime. To investigate the determinants of the performance of the mixed regime relative to the public or the private regime, I simulate the model with various parameter values. I find that the mixed regime generates higher long-run mean income than the public regime if the elasticity of future income to education is high. I also find that long-run mean income is higher (lower) in the mixed regime than in the public regime if the variance of stochastic ability is large (small). I use the model to evaluate the effects of the introduction of private educational vouchers. The results suggest that the introduction of vouchers improves long-run total welfare, and reduces long-run income inequality as long as public education is maintained.

Suggested Citation

  • Ryuichi Tanaka, 2004. "On the Costs and Benefits of a Mixed Educational Regime," Econometric Society 2004 Far Eastern Meetings 470, Econometric Society.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecm:feam04:470
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://homepages.nyu.edu/~rt298/mixed.pdf
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David De La Croix & Matthias Doepke, 2009. "To Segregate or to Integrate: Education Politics and Democracy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(2), pages 597-628.
    2. repec:fth:prinin:357 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Benabou, Roland, 1996. "Heterogeneity, Stratification, and Growth: Macroeconomic Implications of Community Structure and School Finance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 584-609, June.
    4. James Heckman, 2011. "Policies to foster human capital," Voprosy obrazovaniya / Educational Studies Moscow, National Research University Higher School of Economics, issue 3, pages 73-137.
    5. Saint-Paul, Gilles & Verdier, Thierry, 1993. "Education, democracy and growth," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 399-407, December.
    6. Loury, Glenn C, 1981. "Intergenerational Transfers and the Distribution of Earnings," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(4), pages 843-867, June.
    7. Banerjee, Abhijit V & Newman, Andrew F, 1993. "Occupational Choice and the Process of Development," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(2), pages 274-298, April.
    8. Card, David & Krueger, Alan B, 1992. "Does School Quality Matter? Returns to Education and the Characteristics of Public Schools in the United States," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(1), pages 1-40, February.
    9. Lankford, Hamilton & Wyckoff, James, 2001. "Who Would Be Left Behind by Enhanced Private School Choice?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 288-312, September.
    10. O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), 1999. "Handbook of Labor Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 3, number 3.
    11. de la Croix, David & Doepke, Matthias, 2004. "Public versus private education when differential fertility matters," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 607-629, April.
    12. Gerhard Glomm & B. Ravikumar, 1998. "Opting out of publicly provided services: A majority voting result," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 15(2), pages 187-199.
    13. Boldrin, Michele, 2005. "Public education and capital accumulation," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 85-109, June.
    14. Fernández, Raquel & Rogerson, Richard, 1999. "Education finance reform and investment in human capital: lessons from California," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(3), pages 327-350, December.
    15. Benabou, R., 1992. "Heterogeneity, Stratification, and Growth," Working papers 93-4, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    16. Tanaka, Ryuichi, 2003. "Inequality as a determinant of child labor," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 93-97, July.
    17. Thomas J. Nechyba, 2003. "Centralization, Fiscal Federalism, and Private School Attendance," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 44(1), pages 179-204, February.
    18. David Card & Alan Krueger, 1996. "Labor Market Effects of School Quality: Theory and Evidence," Working Papers 736, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    19. Card, David, 1999. "The causal effect of education on earnings," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 30, pages 1801-1863, Elsevier.
    20. Gerhard Glomm & Roger Lagunoff, 1999. "A Dynamic Tiebout Theory of Voluntary vs. Involuntary Provision of Public Goods," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(3), pages 659-677.
    21. Gradstein, Mark & Justman, Moshe, 1997. "Democratic Choice of an Education System: Implications for Growth and Income Distribution," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 2(2), pages 169-183, July.
    22. David Card & Alan B. Krueger, 1996. "Labor Market Effects of School Quality: Theory and Evidence," NBER Working Papers 5450, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    23. Solon, Gary, 1992. "Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 393-408, June.
    24. Epple, Dennis & Romano, Richard E., 1996. "Ends against the middle: Determining public service provision when there are private alternatives," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(3), pages 297-325, November.
    25. Fernandez, Raquel & Rogerson, Richard, 1998. "Public Education and Income Distribution: A Dynamic Quantitative Evaluation of Education-Finance Reform," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(4), pages 813-833, September.
    26. Glomm, Gerhard & Ravikumar, B, 1992. "Public versus Private Investment in Human Capital Endogenous Growth and Income Inequality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(4), pages 818-834, August.
    27. Raquel Fernandez & Richard Rogerson, 1995. "On the Political Economy of Education Subsidies," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 62(2), pages 249-262.
    28. Keane, Michael P & Wolpin, Kenneth I, 2001. "The Effect of Parental Transfers and Borrowing Constraints on Educational Attainment," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 42(4), pages 1051-1103, November.
    29. Peter L. Bossaerts & Bernt Arne Ødegaard, 2001. "Finance," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Lectures On Corporate Finance, chapter 1, pages 3-5, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:15:y:2005:i:11:p:1-9 is not listed on IDEAS

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fernández, Raquel, 2001. "Sorting, Education and Inequality," CEPR Discussion Papers 3020, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Christopher Rauh, 2015. "The Political Economy of Early and College Education - Can Voting Bend the Great Gatsby Curve?," 2015 Meeting Papers 82, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Kammas, Pantelis & Litina, Anastasia & Palivos, Theodore, 2013. "The Quality of Public Education in Unequal Societies: The Role of Tax Institutions," MPRA Paper 52193, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Raquel Fernandez, 2001. "Sorting, Education and Inequality," NBER Working Papers 8101, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Tetsuo Ono, 2015. "Public education and social security: a political economy approach," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 1-25, February.
    6. Roland Benabou, 2002. "Tax and Education Policy in a Heterogeneous-Agent Economy: What Levels of Redistribution Maximize Growth and Efficiency?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(2), pages 481-517, March.
    7. Catalina Gutiérrez & Ryuichi Tanaka, 2009. "Inequality and education decisions in developing countries," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 7(1), pages 55-81, March.
    8. Soares, Jorge, 2003. "Self-interest and public funding of education," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(3-4), pages 703-727, March.
    9. Fernández, Raquel & Rogerson, Richard, 1999. "Education finance reform and investment in human capital: lessons from California," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(3), pages 327-350, December.
    10. Yuki Uchida & Tetsuo Ono, 2020. "Inequality and education choice," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 27(4), pages 980-1018, August.
    11. David De La Croix & Matthias Doepke, 2009. "To Segregate or to Integrate: Education Politics and Democracy," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(2), pages 597-628.
    12. Michele Bernasconi & Paola Profeta, 2007. "Redistribution or Education? The Political Economy of the Social Race," CESifo Working Paper Series 1934, CESifo.
    13. Grossmann, Volker, 2008. "Risky human capital investment, income distribution, and macroeconomic dynamics," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 19-42, March.
    14. Benabou, Roland, 2005. "Inequality, Technology and the Social Contract," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 25, pages 1595-1638, Elsevier.
    15. Brotherhood, Luiz & Delalibera, Bruno R., 2020. "Minding the gap between schools and universities," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    16. Takii, Katsuya & Tanaka, Ryuichi, 2009. "Does the diversity of human capital increase GDP? A comparison of education systems," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(7-8), pages 998-1007, August.
    17. John Hassler & José Rodríguez Mora & Joseph Zeira, 2007. "Inequality and mobility," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 235-259, September.
    18. Diego Restuccia & Carlos Urrutia, 2004. "Intergenerational Persistence of Earnings: The Role of Early and College Education," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1354-1378, December.
    19. Su, Xuejuan, 2006. "Endogenous determination of public budget allocation across education stages," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 438-456, December.
    20. Jorge Soares, "undated". "Altruism and Self-interest in a Political Economy of Public Education," Working Papers 130, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Income inequality; School choice; Majority vote; Stochastic ability;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • O11 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Macroeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • I22 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Educational Finance; Financial Aid
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecm:feam04:470. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/essssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.