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

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

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

Trade and Industrial Policy of Transition Economies

Trade reforms in transition economies are analyzed in a model of trade and vertical product differentiation. We first show that trade liberalization in transition economies reduces the local firm’s output and raises the prices of all variants. Second, we find that neither free trade nor the absence of a subsidy are optimal. Third, there exists a rationale for a government commitment to use socially optimal trade and industrial policies to release the domestic firm from low-quality production. Finally, we establish an equivalence result between the effects of exchange rate changes and those of trade policy on price competition (but not on social welfare).Exchange rates, leapfrogging, optimal trade policy, product quality, trade liberalization

Procompetitive Trade Policies

We study the procompetitive effects of trade policies against a foreign oligopoly in a model of vertical product differentiation. We show that a uniform tariff policy like the Most Favored Nation (MFN) clause is always welfare superior to free trade because of a pure rent-extraction effect. However, a nonuniform tariff policy is, in addition, procompetitive and thus yields a higher level of social welfare. The first best policy typically consists of giving a subsidy to the country producing low quality and levying a tariff on the country producing high quality. Regional Trade Agreements (RTYs) are examples of nonuniform tariff policies. We show that these arrangements yield higher welfare than free trade and, moreover, that a RTA with a low-quality producing country yields larger gains than a RTA with a high-quality producing country.endogenous quality, most favored nation (MFN) clause, procompetitive policies, regional trade agreements

An Example of Procompetitive Trade Policies

The procompetitive effects of trade policies are analyzed in a foreign duopoly model of vertical product differentiation. A uniform tariff policy complying with the Most Favored Nation (MFN) clause is welfare superior to free trade because of a pure rent-extracting effect. A nonuniform tariff policy yields an even higher level of social welfare because of procompetitive effects. The optimalpolicyissensitivetofirms’ cost asymmetries: if these are high, imports of low quality are subsidized and imports of high quality face a tariff; otherwise, both imports face a tariff. Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) are examples of such nonuniform tariff policies. They yield higher welfare than free trade because they are procompetitive; moreover, a RTA with a lowquality producing country yields larger gains than a RTA with a high-quality producing country because the former enables the importer to extract foreign rents.endogenous quality, hedonic prices, procompetitive policies, regional trade agreements

Dumping in Developing and Transition Economies

We build a simple theoretical model to understand why developing and transition economies have increasingly applied anti-dumping laws. To that end, we investigate the strategic incentives of oligopolistic exporting firms to undertake dumping in these economies. We show that dumping may be due to cross-country differences in income, to the extent of tariff protection and to the exchange rate depreciations observed recently. Dumping may arise even if consumers exhaust all arbitrage possibilities.dumping, exchange rate, optimal trade policy, product quality

The Trade and FDI Effects of EMU Enlargement

This paper considers the nature and the distribution of trade and FDI effects of a potential enlargement of the European Monetary Union (EMU) to the ten countries that obtained EU membership in 2004. One-way and two-way error component gravity models are estimated using a dataset of unbalanced panel data that combines bilateral trade flows among 29 countries and the distribution of outward FDI stocks among these countries. The results reveal a complementarity between trade and investment and a relationship between trade and exchange rate volatility that depends on the sign of bilateral trade balances. Using a simulation-based technique, we find that estimates of FDI effects of EMU range between 18.5 percent for Poland and 30 percent for Hungary.EMU, exchange rate volatility, foreign investment, trade diversion, vertical integration

Anti-Dumping, Intra-Industry Trade and Quality Reversals

We examine an export game where two firms (home and foreign), located in two different countries, produce vertically differentiated products. The foreign firm is the most efficient in terms of R&D costs of quality development and the foreign country is relatively larger and endowed with a relatively higher income. The unique (risk-dominant) Nash equilibrium involves intra-industry trade where the foreign producer manufactures a good of higher quality than the domestic firm. This equilibrium is characterized by unilateral dumping by the foreign firm into the domestic economy. Two instruments of anti-dumping (AD) policy are examined, namely, a price undertaking (PU) and an anti-dumping duty. We show that, when firms’ cost asymmetries are low and countries differ substantially in size, a PU leads to a quality reversal in the international market, which gives a rationale for the domestic government to enact AD law. We also establish an equivalence result between the effects of an AD duty and a PU.anti-dumping duty, intra-industry trade, price undertaking, product quality, quality reversals

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