Essays in Public Education

Chapter 1 introduces some of the issues which are addressed in the other chapters of this dissertation. These topics include: (1) the general equilibrium incentives in the provision of public education, (2) human capital production functions in economic modeling, (3) how public education spending may impact income inequality -- both positively and negatively, (4) the effect on public education spending of changes in the college wage premium, and (5) the overall efficiency of government-supplied capital. Chapter 2 develops a public education system in which voters face general equilibrium incentives to pay taxes for education. Middle-aged voters can increase their returns to saving by increasing the aggregate amount of human capital in the economy. I find that if students differ by their ability to increase their human capital levels through schooling, then the public education policy will invest more education funds in more productive students; this perpetuates income inequality. Also, the greater the discount rate for consumption and the elasticity of education funds in the human capital production function, the more likely it is that a public system provides greater growth in the steady state than a private system. Chapter 3 studies the allocation of government spending between general tuition subsidies for college students and need-based aid which is directed solely towards students from low-income households. The way to maximize the number of students may be to provide some need-based aid. I find that government provides more aid directed to low-income students if need-based tuition subsidies are provided rather than student loan subsidies. I also look at the effects of changes in parameters, such as the cost of education and the college wage premium, on the policies. Chapter 4 investigates the returns to aggregate factors of production when labor is disaggregated by education level. I find that a model in which the error term is assumed to be state-wise heteroscedastic and autocorrelated does a better job of approximating the pattern of wages for the different education groups than other models (pooled OLS or random and fixed effects). In addition, this model suggests a significant positive elasticity for public capital.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph. D.

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Economics

Department dc:contributor.department

Economics (Arts and Sciences)

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

1999

Author dc:creator

• Bowles, Robert

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Rosenthal, Stuart

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Murphy, Russell D.
• Salehi-Isfahani, Djavad
• Snyder, Susan K.
• Tideman, Nicolaus

• panel data
• human capital
• general equilibrium
• educational finance
• tuition subsidies

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-041599-180126

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/26892