[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/6881.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

General Equilibrium Cost Benefit Analysis of Education and Tax Policies

Author

Listed:
  • James J. Heckman
  • Lance Lochner
  • Christopher Taber
Abstract
This paper formulates and estimates an open-economy overlapping generation general-equilibrium model of endogenous heterogeneous human capital in the form of schooling and on-the-job training. Physical capital accumulation is also analyzed. We use the model to explain rising wage inequality in the past two decades due to skill-biased technical change and to estimate investment responses. We compare an open economy version with a closed economy version. Using our empirically grounded general equilibrium model that explains rising wage inequality, we evaluate two policies often suggested as solutions to the problem of rising wage inequality: (a) tuition subsidies to promote skill formation and (b) tax policies. We establish that conventional partial equilibrium policy evaluation methods widely used in labor economics and public finance give substantially misleading estimates of the impact of national tax and tuition policies on skill formation. Conventional microeconomic methods for estimating the schooling response to tuition overestimate the response by an order of magnitude. Simulations of our model also reveal that move to a flat consumption tax raises capital accumulation and the real wages of all skill groups and barely affects overall measures of income inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • James J. Heckman & Lance Lochner & Christopher Taber, 1999. "General Equilibrium Cost Benefit Analysis of Education and Tax Policies," NBER Working Papers 6881, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6881
    Note: LS PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w6881.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. William R. Johnson, 2006. "Are Public Subsidies to Higher Education Regressive?," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 1(3), pages 288-315, June.
    2. Loayza,Norman V. & Ouazad,Amine & Ranciere,Romain, 2017. "Financial development, growth, and crisis: is there a trade-off ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 8237, The World Bank.
    3. Kirk A. Collins & James B. Davies, 2002. "Measuring Effective Tax Rates on Human Capital: The Canadian Case," University of Western Ontario, Economic Policy Research Institute Working Papers 20025, University of Western Ontario, Economic Policy Research Institute.
    4. Raaum,O. & Aabo,T.E., 1999. "The effect of schooling on earnings : the role of family background studied by a large sample of Norwegian twins," Memorandum 16/1999, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    5. Oddbjørn Raaum & Tom Erik Aabø, 2000. "The Effect of Schooling on Earnings: Evidence on the role of family background from a large sample of Norwegian twins," Nordic Journal of Political Economy, Nordic Journal of Political Economy, vol. 26, pages 95-113.
    6. Berger, Johannes & Strohner, Ludwig, 2020. "Documentation of the PUblic Policy Model for Austria and other European countries (PUMA)," Research Papers 11, EcoAustria – Institute for Economic Research.
    7. Edwin Leuven & Hessel Oosterbeek & Bas van der Klaauw, 2010. "The Effect of Financial Rewards on Students' Achievement: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 8(6), pages 1243-1265, December.
    8. Lorraine Dearden & Carl Emmerson & Christine Frayne & Costas Meghir, 2005. "Education subsidies and school drop-out rates," IFS Working Papers W05/11, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    9. Salvador Navarro, 2011. "Using Observed Choices to Infer Agent's Information: Reconsidering the Importance of Borrowing Constraints, Uncertainty and Preferences in College Attendance," University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP) Working Papers 20118, University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP).
    10. Kraft, Holger & Munk, Claus & Seifried, Frank Thomas & Steffensen, Mogens, 2014. "Consumption and wage humps in a life-cycle model with education," SAFE Working Paper Series 53, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    11. Annette Alstadsæter, 2011. "Measuring the Consumption Value of Higher Education," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 57(3), pages 458-479, September.
    12. OBARA, Takuya, 2018. "Optimal human capital policies under the endogenous choice of educational types," CCES Discussion Paper Series 66_v2, Center for Research on Contemporary Economic Systems, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University.
    13. Cunha, Flavio & Heckman, James, 2008. "A New Framework For The Analysis Of Inequality," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(S2), pages 315-354, September.
    14. Tomas Philipson, 1999. "External Treatment Effects and Program Implementation Bias," Working Papers 9929, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
    15. Dur, Robert & Glazer, Amihai, 2008. "Subsidizing Enjoyable Education," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 1023-1039, October.
    16. Fehr, Hans, 1999. "Welfare Effects of Dynamic Tax Reforms," Beiträge zur Finanzwissenschaft, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, edition 1, volume 5, number urn:isbn:9783161470165, September.
    17. Jonathan Pincus, 2000. "Do We Know Federal Treasury Overspends on Undergraduates?," Agenda - A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics, vol. 7(3), pages 277-288.
    18. William R. Johnson, 2004. "When is the Efficient Subsidy to Higher Education the Equitable Subsidy ?," Virginia Economics Online Papers 366, University of Virginia, Department of Economics.
    19. Kirk A. Collins & James Davies, 2003. "Measuring Effective Tax Rates on Human Capital: Methodology and an Application to Canada," CESifo Working Paper Series 965, CESifo.
    20. Juan A. Rojas, 2004. "On the Interaction between Education and Social Security," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 7(4), pages 932-957, October.
    21. Heckman, James J., 2001. "Econometrics and empirical economics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 3-5, January.
    22. OBARA, Takuya, 2017. "Optimal human capital policies under the endogenous choice of educational types," CCES Discussion Paper Series 66, Center for Research on Contemporary Economic Systems, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University.
    23. Lutz Hendricks, 2001. "How Do Taxes Affect Human Capital? The Role of Intergenerational Mobility," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 4(3), pages 695-735, July.
    24. James Heckman & Lance Lockner & Christopher Taber, 1999. "Human capital formation and general equilibrium treatment effects: a study of tax and tuition policy," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 20(1), pages 25-40, March.
    25. Lutz Hendricks, 2001. "How Do Taxes Affect Human Capital? The Role of Intergenerational Mobility," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 4(3), pages 695-735, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H52 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Education
    • H43 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Project Evaluation; Social Discount Rate

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6881. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.