Competition in Funding Higher Education

In higher education pure credit market funding leads to underinvestment while income-contingent loans funding tends to produce overinvestment. We analyze whether a market structure in which both funding schemes coexist and compete against each other might restore efficiency of the educational investment process. In the absence of government intervention, we find that funding competition does not rectify the investment inefficiency nor will it improve pooling of individual income risks. However, a policy which allows the two financing schemes to compete and which, at the same time, restricts access to higher education can achieve investment efficiency and improve risk pooling. We find that the equilibrium with funding competition and restricted participation yields the highest level of social welfare.higher education, funding competition, human capital formation

Private Investment in Higher Education: Comparing Alternative Funding Schemes

This paper uses an overlapping generations framework to analyze the implications of different financing regimes in the education sector for human capital formation and economic welfare. Agents privately invest in education after they have received a noisy information signal about their abilities. The incentives of the individuals to invest in education are determined by the financing regime under which the economy operates. The paper analyzes and compares three financing regimes. Under each regime, the payback obligation of an educational loan is contingent, to some extent, on an individual’s future income.higher education, funding regimes, human capital, welfare

Alternative Social Security Systems andGrowth

Demographic trends in most developed economies are characterized by rising longevity and decreasing birthrates. These trends endanger the sustainability of the current public pension systems. Therefore social security reform proposals are on the agenda in many countries. This paper demonstrates that the analysis of fiscal sustainability of social security must include an additional dimension of public policy, namely education funding. Indeed, the productivity growth of future workers, which depends on human capital accumulation, may outweigh the impact of the demographic problem. This fact is true under both pay-as-you-go (PAYG) and fully funded (FF) social security system. We consider an OLG economy where government, in addition to running social security, also funds education of future workers by means of taxes collected from the current ones. The education tax rates are chosen, in each period, by a majoritarian rule among the relevant constituents. We demonstrate that while the FF system results in relatively higher rates of physical capital accumulation, then under some conditions, other things equal, the PAYG social security regime leads to the choice of relatively higher respective levels of education tax rates in all generations, and thereby to higher rates of human capital accumulation.social security, funding, growth, human capital

Optimal Education with Mobile Capital. An OLG Approach (new title: Optimal Public Education under Capital Mobility)

The paper considers a two-country model of overlapping generations economies with intergenerational transfers carried out in the form of bequest and investment in human capital. We examine in competitive equilibrium the optimal provision of education with and without capital markets integration. First, we explore how regimes of education provision - public, private or mixed - arise and how they affect the dynamics of autarkic economies. Second, we study the transitory and long-run effects of capital markets integration, in equilibrium, on the optimal provision of education and growth. Third, we examine a competition game where countries compete in the provision of public education.Altruism, education, growth, human capital, capital markets integration

Human Capital Formation, Income Inequality and Growth

The paper studies the determinants of income distribution and growth in an overlapping generations economy with heterogenous households. Our framework has the following main features: (1) heterogeneity of consumers with respect to wealth and parental human capital; (2) intergenerational transfers are accomplished via investment in the education of the younger generation. Heterogeneity in income results from the distribution of human capital across individuals in a nondegenerate way. The human capital production is affected by the ’home-education’, provided by the parents, as well as the ’public-education’ which is provided equally to all young individuals of the same generation. Due to investments in human capital our economy is an endogenous growth model. First, we explore the effects of technological improvements in the human capital process, upon the distribution of income at each date along the equilibrium path. Second, we study the impact of such technogical progress on growth and relate these results to the income distribution inequality. Third, we provide numerical simulations to quantify the effect of changes in the parameters of the model. Simulation results include exact Gini coefficients and tax rate on labor determined endogenously through majority voting.Human Capital, income distribution, endogenous growth

Public Funding of Higher Education

Recent criticism from different sides has expressed the view that, with scarce resources, there is little justification for massive public funding of higher education. Central to the debate is the conjecture that colleges and universities use their resources inefficiently and focus insufficiently on their mission to expand students’ human potential. Our aim in this paper is to examine the theoretical premises of this conjecture in a small open economy and uncover the conditions under which public investment in higher education is efficient and desirable. We analyze non-stationary equilibria of an OLG economy, characterized by perfect capital mobility, intergenerational transfers and a hierarchical education system. The government uses income tax revenues to finance basic education and support higher education that generates skilled labor. Given this, the following issues are considered: (a) the impact of education and international markets on the equilibrium number of low-skilled and skilled workers in each generation; (b) the economic efficiency of public subsidies to higher education in generating skilled human capital; (c) the endogenous support for a government’s educational policies found in a political equilibrium.hierarchical education, innate ability, capital mobility, education policy, low-skilled workers, skill formation

Improvement in Information, Income Inequality, and Growth

We analyze the importance of information about individual skills for understanding economic growth and income inequality. The paper uses the framework of an OLG economy with endogenous investment in human capital. Agents in each generation differ by random individual ability, or talent, which realizes in the second period of life. The human capital of an agent depends on both his talent and his investment in education. The investment decision is based on a public signal (test outcome) which screens all agents for their talents. We analyze how a better information system, which allows more efficient screening, affects the co-movements of indicators for income inequality and human capital accumulationInformation system, human capital accumulation, income inequality

The Effect of Better Information on Income Inequality

We consider an OLG economy with endogenous investment in human capital. Heterogeneity in individual human capital levels is generated by random innate ability. The production of human capital depends on each individual’s investment in education. This investment decision is taken only after observing a signal which is correlated to his/her true ability, and which is used for updating beliefs. Thus, a better information system affects the distribution of human capital in each generation. Assuming separable and identical preferences for all individuals, we derive the following results in equilibrium: (a) If the relative measure of risk aversion is less (more) than 1 then more information raises (reduces) income inequality. (b) When a risk sharing market is available better information results in higher inequality regardsless of the measure risk aversion.information system, income inequality, risk sharing markets

The Role of Money in Supporting the Pareto Optimality of Competitive Equilibrium in Consumption-Loan Type Models

Perhaps the single most enduring theme in economics is that of the social desirability of the competitive mechanism. In its modern form, this theme occurs as the two basic theorems of welfare economics (see, in particular, Arrow). Our central concern in this paper is with the validity of the first of these two theorems—that every competitive equilibrium yields a Pareto optimal allocation—in idealized yet plausible models of intertemporal allocation in a market economy

UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Policy Announcements and Welfare *

Policy announcements and welfare Stoltenberg, C.A.; Lepetyuk, V. Link to publication General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. July, 2009 Abstract In the presence of idiosyncratic risk, the public revelation of information about uncertain aggregate outcomes such as policy choices can be detrimental to social welfare. By announcing informative signals on non-insurable aggregate risk, the policy maker distorts agents' insurance incentives and increases the riskiness of the optimal allocation that is feasible in self-enforceable arrangements. As an application, we consider a monetary authority that may reveal changes in the inflation target, and document that the negative effect of distorted insurance incentives can very well dominate conventional effects in favor for the release of better information. JEL classification: D81, D86, E21, E52, E65