The State, Socialisation, and Private Schooling: When Will Governments Support Alternative Producers?

Lant Pritchett and Martina Viarengo

Journal of Development Studies, 2015, vol. 51, issue 7, 784-807

Abstract: Understanding the institutional features that can improve learning outcomes and reduce inequality is a top priority for international and development organisations around the world. Economists appear to have a good case for support to non-governmental alternatives as suppliers of schooling. However, unlike other policy domains, freer international trade or privatisation, economists have been remarkably unsuccessful in promoting the adoption of this idea. We develop a general positive model of why governments typically produce schooling which introduces the key notion of the lack of verifiability of socialisation and instruction of beliefs, which makes third party contracting for socialisation problematic. We use the model to explain variations around the world in levels of private schooling. We also predict the circumstances in which efforts to promote the different alternatives to government production - like charter, voucher, and scholarship - are likely to be successful.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00220388.2015.1034109 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The State, Socialization, and Private Schooling: When Will Governments Support Alternative Producers? (2013)
Working Paper: The State, Socialization, and Private Schooling: When Will Governments Support Alternative Producers? (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:51:y:2015:i:7:p:784-807

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/FJDS20

DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2015.1034109

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Studies is currently edited by Howard White, Oliver Morrissey and Ken Shadlen

More articles in Journal of Development Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().