Land Use Controls and the Provision of Education

Considerable prior analysis has gone into the study of zoning restrictions on locational choice and on fiscal burdens. The prior work on zoning - particularly fiscal or exclusionary zoning - has provided both inconclusive theoretical results and quite inconsistent empirical support of the theory. More importantly, none of this work addresses important questions about the level and distribution of public goods that are provided under fiscal zoning. Since fiscal issues and Tiebout demands are central to much of the motivation for exclusionary zoning, we expand the theoretical analysis to encompass the interplay between land use restrictions and public good provision. In this, we focus on schooling outcomes, since the provision of education is one of the primary activities of local jurisdictions. We develop a general equilibrium model of location and the provision of education. Some households create a fiscal burden, motivating the use by local governments of exclusionary land-use controls. Then, the paper analyzes what the market effects of land-use controls are and how successful they are. The policies considered (minimum lot size zoning, local public finance with a head tax, and fringe zoning) demonstrate how household behavior directly affects the equilibrium outcomes and the provision of the local public good.

Schools and Location: Tiebout, Alonso, and Government Policy

An important element in considering school finance policies is that households are not passive. Instead they respond to policies with a combination of modified residential choice and political choice of tax levels. The highly stylized decision models of most existing analyses, however, lead to conerns about the policy evaluations. In our general equilibrium model of residential location and community choice, households base optimizing decisions on commuting costs, school quality, and land rents. With both centralized and decentralized employment, the resulting equilibrium has heterogeneous communities in terms of income and tastes for schools. This model is used to analyze a series of conventional policy experiments, including school district consolidation, district power utilization, and different equalization devices. The important conclusion is that welfare falls for all families with the restrictions in choice that are implied by these approaches.

Public Housing Units vs. Housing Vouchers: Accessibility, Local Public Goods, and Welfare

A perennial debate worldwide over housing aid policy focuses on whether the government should provide housing vouchers or subsidized public housing units. To complement the empirically- dominated literature, this paper builds a general equilibrium model that merges urban land use (monocentric city) and Tiebout frameworks. In our model, public housing units or housing vouchers are rationed and some lower-income people have to compete with those with higher incomes in the private rental market. We discuss how location of public housing units is an essential policy variable in addition to the numbers and sizes of units, and argue why housing vouchers may be preferable to public housing.Conditional CAPM

Borrowing Constraints, College Aid, and Intergenerational Mobility

The current level and form of subsidization of college education is often rationalized by appeal to capital constraints on individuals. Because borrowing against human capital is difficult, capital constraints can lead to nonoptimal outcomes unless government intervenes. We develop a simple dynamic general equilibrium model of the economy that permits us to explore the impact of alternative ways of subsidizing higher education. The key features of this model include endogenously determined bequests from parents that can be used to finance schooling, uncertainty in college completion related to differences in ability, and wage determination based upon the amount of schooling in the economy. Because policies toward college lead to large changes in schooling, it is very important to consider the general equilibrium effects on wages. Within this structure, we analyze tuition subsidies such as exist in most public colleges, alternative forms of need-based aid, income contingent loans, and merit-based aid. Each of these policies tends both to improve the efficiency of the economy while yielding more intergenerational mobility and greater income equality. But, the various policies have quite different implications for societal welfare, and the underlying subsidy patterns vary widely.

Redistribution through Education and Other Transfer Mechanisms

Educational subsidies are frequently justified as a method of altering the income distribution. It is thus natural to compare education to other tax-transfer schemes designed to achieve distributional objectives. While equity-efficiency trade-offs are frequently discussed, they are rarely explicitly treated. This paper creates a general equilibrium model of school attendance, labor supply, wage determination, and aggregate production, which is used to compare alternative redistribution devices in terms of both deadweight loss and distributional outcomes. A wage subidy generally dominates tuition subsidies in ex ante (or 'opportunity') calculations, but this reverses in ex post (or 'realized') calculations. Both are generally superior to a negative income tax. With externalities in production, however, there is an unambiguous role for governmental subsidy of education, because it both raises GDP and creates a more equal income distribution.

Household Location and Schools in Metropolitan Areas with Heterogeneous Suburbs; Tiebout, Alonso, and Government Policy

An important element in considering school finance policies is that households are not passive but instead respond to policies. Household behavior is especially important in considering how households affect the spatial structure of metropolitan areas where different jurisdictions incorporate bundles of advantages and disadvantages. This paper adds richness to existing urban models by incorporating multiple workplace locations, alternative public services by jurisdiction (school qualities), and voter- determined school expenditure. In our general equilibrium model of residential location and community choice, households base optimizing decisions on commuting costs, school quality, and land rents. The resulting equilibrium has heterogeneous communities in terms of income and tastes for schools. This basic model is used to analyze a series of conventional policy experiments, including school district consolidation and district power utilization. The important conclusion within our range of simulations is that welfare falls for all families with the restrictions on choice that are implied by these approaches.

Redistribution through Education and Other Transfer Mechanisms

Educational subsidies are frequently justified as a method of altering the Income distribution. It is thus natural to compare education to other tax-transfer schemes designed to achieve distributional objectives. While equity-efficiency trade-offs are frequently discussed, they are rarely explicitly treated. This paper creates a general equilibrium model of school attendance, labor supply, wage determination, and aggregate production, which is used to compare alternative redistribution devices in terms of both deadweight loss and distributional outcomes. A wage subidy generally dominates tuition subsidies in ex ante (or "opportunity") calculations, but this reverses in ex post (or "realized") calculations. Both are generally superior to a negative income tax. With externalities in production, however, there is an unambiguous role for governmental subsidy of education, because it both raises GDP and creates a more equal income distribution.

Public housing units vs. housing vouchers: accessibility, local public goods, and welfare

We develop a general equilibrium model of residential choice and study the effects of two housing aid policies, public housing units and housing vouchers. Land is differentiated by both residential accessibility and local public goods, and the provision levels of local public goods are determined by property tax revenues and neighborhood compositions. Households differ in their incomes and preferences for local public goods. Housing aid policies are financed by general income taxes. We discuss how the location of public housing units is a fundamental policy variable, in addition to the numbers and sizes of units, and argue that vouchers not only cause less distortion for social welfare compared to public housing, but may also improve overall welfare

Borrowing Constraints, College Aid, and Intergenerational Mobility

This paper provides a consistent comparison of general tuition subsidies, need-based student aid, merit-based student aid, and income continent loans (ICL). Each of these policies is analyzed through a dynamic general equilibrium model in which individuals differ in family wealth and opportunities of completing college. The overlapping generation structure of the model permits evaluation of different aid schemes in their implications on the aggregate outcomes, income distribution and intergenerational mobility. Compared to current U.S. tuition and loan policies, the ICL and need-based policies are most effective in promoting the aggregate efficiency and income equality, while merit-based policies are least effective

States and School Finance

In the US, the share of school district revenues that state and local governments provide for K-12 has changed significantly over the last century. Historically, K-12 education was highly decentralized and funded largely by property taxes of local governments. States played only a supporting role. Today, states, which obtain the biggest portion of tax revenues from income and sales taxes, play a large and increasing role in school funding. This paper uses a hybrid Tiebout model to analyze the impact of the education finance policy change in a general equilibrium framework