Regional update

Economic conditions - Texas

The evidence on government competition

Society clearly benefits when businesses compete. The social benefits of government competition are still being debated, however. A large economics literature has sprung up to explore the premise that governments facing intense competitive pressure behave differently than do governments facing little or no competition. Lori Taylor examines the literature on government size, service quality, and productivity. She concludes that an ill-defined market for government, together with inconsistent and potentially inappropriate measuring sticks, raises the strong possibility that competition has been mismeasured in much of the literature on competition and government. Despite these flaws, the literature strongly supports one striking conclusion--competition improves public schools. Almost across the board, researchers have found that school spending is lower, academic outcomes are better, and school district efficiency is higher where parents have more choice of educational provider. Furthermore, competitive benefits appear regardless of whether the competitor is a private school or another public school.

Measuring the value of school quality

Education

The impact of differential human capital stocks on club allocations

Human capital

Student emigration and the willingness to pay for public schools: a test of the publicness of public high schools in the U.S

Education ; Human capital

A dose of market discipline: the new education initiatives

Education

The border: Is it really a low-wage area?

Employment (Economic theory)

Allocative inefficiency and local government: evidence rejecting the Tiebout hypothesis

Local government

Government's role in primary and secondary education

Traditionally, economists offer three broad rationales for government participation in education--market failure, externalities, and altruism. In this article, Lori Taylor describes the three rationales, discusses the economic evidence in their support, and examines their major implications for the role of government in primary and secondary education. She concludes that there is a significant public interest in education. However, the government's role is clearly a subordinate one; families should remain the primary educational decision makers--and the primary educational financiers. Finally, her analysis of the economic evidence suggests that while government has an interest in ensuring that schools produce desirable social outcomes, it does not necessarily have a role in providing educational services or in regulating the way in which private schools provide such services.Education