Suchergebnisse

We provide a normative analysis of endogenous student and worker mobility in the presence of diverging interests between universities and governments. Student mobility generates a university competition effect which induces them to overinvest in education, whereas worker mobility generates a free-rider effect for governments, who are not willing to subsidize the education of agents who will work abroad. At equilibrium, the free-rider effect always dominates the competition effect, resulting in underinvestment in human capital and overinvestment in research. This inefficiency can be corrected if a transnational transfer for mobile students is implemented. With endogenous income taxation, we show that the strength of fiscal competition increases with human capital production. Consequently, supranational policies aimed at promoting teaching quality reduce tax revenues at the expense of research.

Tiebout choice among districts is the most powerful market force in American public education. Naive estimates of its effects are biased by endogenous district formation. I derive instruments from the natural boundaries in a metropolitan area. My results suggest that metropolitan areas with greater Tiebout choice have more productive public schools and less private schooling. Little of the effect of Tiebout choice works through its effect on household sorting. This finding may be explained by another finding: students are equally segregated by school in metropolitan areas with greater and lesser degrees of Tiebout choice among districts. (JEL H70, I20)