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While it is widely believed that electoral competition influences public spending decisions, there has been relatively little effort to examine how recent democratization in the developing world has resulted in changes in basic service provision. There have been even fewer attempts to investigate whether democracy matters for public spending in the poorest developing countries, where "weak institutions" may mean that the formal adoption of electoral competition has little effect on policy. In this article I confront these questions directly, asking whether the shift to multiparty competition in African countries has resulted in increased spending on primary education. I develop an argument, illustrated with a game‐theoretic model, which suggests that the need to obtain an electoral majority may have prompted African governments to spend more on education and to prioritize primary schools over universities within the education budget. I test three propositions from the model using panel data on electoral competition and education spending in African countries. I find clear evidence that democratically elected African governments have spent more on primary education, while spending on universities appears unaffected by democratization.

THE AUTHORS COMPARE SPENDING ON EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES AND OTHER INDUSTRIALIZED COUNTRIES, EXPLAIN HOW THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION HAS MISINTERPRETED THE FACTS ON U.S. EDUCATIONAL FUNDING, AND LOOK AT BUSH'S EDUCATIONAL POLICY.

This paper examines the interplay between public education expenditure and economic growth in a two-sector model with manufactured goods and services. When public education is financed by sectoral taxes, the education policy maximizing the growth rate differs from that obtained by the standard unisectoral tax. The reasons for this are twofold. First, because agents' preferences for services, human capital and savings become a major determinant of the relationship between growth and public education expenditure. Second, because education spending is a service and hence sectoral taxation creates a distortion by affecting its relative price. Finally, we reveal that a sectoral tax may perform better than a standard aggregate production tax in terms of long-term growth. Adapted from the source document.

Existe un amplio consenso, tanto entre académicos como entre decisores políticos, sobre el cúmulo de beneficios derivados de la educación. Mejorar el nivel educativo de la población se ha identificado como un factor clave para el crecimiento económico y el desarrollo; pero también para el avance de la democracia, la movilidad social y la realización individual. La potencia de estas ventajas suele ser recogida en los discursos políticos, que consideran el progreso educativo un objetivo esencial para el desarrollo. Sin embargo, la amplitud de este consenso parece tornarse más difuso a la hora de asignar recursos públicos. Entonces, objetivos macroeconómicos y técnicos, presiones de las elites sociales o intereses políticos de los partidos gobernantes terminan configurando las opciones de política. Esta tesis analiza el gasto público en educación y sus resultados. Adopta una doble perspectiva: considera grupos de países y su dinámica en el tiempo. Sus tres capítulos exploran diferentes aspectos del tema y buscan respuestas a preguntas como las siguientes: ¿cómo y por qué los recursos públicos se traducen en resultados educativos valiosos? ¿Por qué algunos países obtienen mayores beneficios del gasto en educación que otros? ¿Qué motivación impulsa a los políticos a dar prioridad al gasto en educación? El primer estudio aborda la eficiencia del gasto en educación: provee evidencia sobre su evolución y posibles determinantes. Sostiene que en entornos de baja inversión pública, el mero aumento de la eficiencia del gasto en educación no resulta suficiente para mejorar los resultados. En el segundo capítulo se evalúa el impacto de la educación terciaria sobre la productividad. El trabajo muestra que los retornos sociales de este nivel educativo están condicionados por el monto de recursos que concentra a expensas de los niveles masivos de educación y por la proporción de estudiantes matriculados en áreas de conocimiento vinculadas a las matemáticas, física y ciencias de la vida. Por último, en el tercer capítulo se ...

This paper examines the association between economic development and two measures of public spending on education, namely the 'national effort' (total spending as a percentage of GDP) and 'budget share' (total spending as a percentage of total government spending). Using data for a large sample of countries from 1989 to 2015, we illustrate a novel application of Wagner's law. We compare mean levels of national effort and budget share measures for economically and politically distinct groups of countries. We find that the signs of the associations between the level of economic development and the two education spending measures differ. This implies that richer countries have larger public sectors than do poorer countries, consistent with Wagner's Law. The findings are summarized in the form of three inequality propositions about the national effort, budget share and size of government for richer versus poorer countries. In addition, for comparable levels of economic development, democratic countries tend to spend more on education than is the case for their non-democratic counterparts.

Ce papier examine le lien entre éducation publique et croissance économique à l'aide d'un modèle à deux secteurs, dans lequel l'agent consomme un bien manufacturé et des services. Lorsque l'éducation publique est financée par des taxes sectorielles, la politique éducative qui maximise le taux de croissance diffère de celle dictée par un financement uni-sectoriel. Deux mécanismes expliquent cela. Tout d'abord, les préférences des agents en capital humain, en service et en épargne affectent la relation croissance-éducation publique dès lors que des taxes sectorielles sont considérées. Ensuite, ce type de financement crée une distorsion, en modifiant le prix relatif de l'éducation, qui est supposée être un bien de services. Nous montrons ainsi qu'un financement de l'éducation publique par des taxes sectorielles peut conduire à un taux de croissance de long-terme plus élevé qu'une taxe sur la production agrégée.

By the turn of the 20th century, nation-building reformers in Spain tried to stimulate schooling expansion to improve (or at least dignify) Spain's position in the international arena. However, in this paper we find that democratic imperfections help explaining the modest spread of primary schooling after the 1902 reforms. Regression results show that the lack of effective electoral competition and political patronage lowered public primary education spending across Spanish provinces in 1902-22. Voter turnout had a positive impact but it was not big enough to compensate for this negative effect.