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Abstract.  This paper documents that in poor countries redistribution in cash is negligible. To the extent that public education funding is redistributive, the lion's share of redistribution in poor countries is through public education budgets. I present a simple model of how inequality determines redistribution through public education spending when funding decisions are made through majority voting. Contrary to T. Persson and G. Tabellini, and contrary to conventional wisdom, in the present model higher inequality leads to less redistribution if the curvature in the utility function is sufficiently high. I argue that large curvature of the utility function is empirically relevant.

This paper examines the evolution of inequality in an overlapping generations model where each individual's human capital investment depends on quality of schools. We consider an education regime where the quality of schools is a publicly provided input financed by an income tax. We show that the income gap between the rich & the poor may widen even when the quality of public education is the same across all individuals. Thus, in the short run, public education may not be the great equalizer as intended by its proponents, though it is in the long run. We also show that the effect of taxes on inequality is ambiguous. 1 Table, 4 Figures, 21 References. Adapted from the source document.

In this paper, we present an overlapping‐generations model, where individuals accumulate human capital through formal schooling. We model the role of the public sector in schooling as one of collecting taxes from households and providing inputs to the learning technology. Public expenditures on schools are determined endogenously. Under plausible restrictions, our model's predictions qualitatively match the observations on schooling, public expenditures on education, and student‐teacher ratios. JEL Classification: E13, E62. Accumulation de capital humain et dépenses publiques endogènes. Dans ce mémoire, les auteurs présentent un modèle de générations qui se chevauchent où les individus accumulent du capital humain via l'éducation formelle. Le rôle du secteur public dans l'éducation est défini comme celui de collecteur d'impôts auprès des ménages et de fournisseur d'intrants dans la technologie d'apprentissage. Les dépenses publiques en éducation sont déterminées de manière endogène. A partir de restrictions plausibles, les prédictions du modèle s'arriment qualitativement aux observations sur le monde scolaire, aux dépenses publiques en éducation, et aux ratios élèves/enseignants.