A Normative Justification of Compulsory Education

Alessandro Balestrino, Lisa Grazzini and Annalisa Luporini (luporini@unifi.it)

Working Papers - Economics from Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa

Abstract: Using a household production model of educational choices, we characterise a free market situation in which some agents ("high-wagers") educate their children full-time and spend a sizable amount of resources on them, while others ("low-wagers") educate them only partially. The free-market equilibrium is inefficient and iniquitous. Public policy is thus called for: however, redistributive taxation alone is counter-productive, as it forces some agents to move away from full-time education for their kids, and educational price subsidies are only moderately effective, since they only work on the intensive margin. It is instead socially optimal to introduce a compulsory education package, using a redistributive tax system to finance it. Redistributive taxation and compulsory education are therefore best seen as complementary policies.

Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.disei.unifi.it/upload/sub/pubblicazioni/repec/pdf/wp18_2013.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: A normative justification of compulsory education (2017)
Working Paper: A normative justification of compulsory education (2017)
Working Paper: A Normative Justification of Compulsory Education (2015)
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:frz:wpaper:wp2013_18.rdf

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers - Economics from Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa Via delle Pandette 9 50127 - Firenze - Italy. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Giorgio Ricchiuti (giorgio.ricchiuti@unifi.it).