Redistribution through education and other transfer mechanisms

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hanushek, EA; Leung, CKY; Yilmaz, K
• 署名单位: Stanford University; Chinese University of Hong Kong; Koc University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF MONETARY ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3932
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jmoneco.2003.01.004
• 发表日期: 2003
• 页码: 1719-1750
• 关键词: equity-efficiency tradeoff; endogenous policy; redistribution; externalities

摘要

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 subsidy generally dominates tuition subsidies across a wide range of fundamental parameters for the economy. 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. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.