Equity and Efficiency Considerations of Public Higher Education

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XII

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2. Outline of the Book

   Pages 1-7

3. The Distributional Impact of Subsidies to Higher Education in the Cross-Sectional Perspective

   1. Previous Studies

      Pages 11-20

   2. Empirical Evidence Using GSOEP Data

      Pages 21-36

4. The Distributional Impact of Subsidies to Higher Education in the Long Run

   1. Previous Related Literature

      Pages 39-47

   2. The Creedy–François Model of Higher-Education Economics as the Basic Framework for our Analysis

      Pages 49-54

   3. The Distributional Effect of Public Subsidization Among Graduates and Non-Graduates—The Life-Cycle Perspective

      Pages 55-64

   4. Alternative Options for Funding

      Pages 65-73

5. The Role of Progressive Taxation

   1. Offsetting Subsidies and Progressive Taxation

      Pages 77-83

   2. Limits of Distortion-Offsetting Subsidies

      Pages 85-86

   3. Summary and Conclusion

      Pages 87-89

6. Back Matter

   Pages 91-130

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It has become part of the conventional wisdom in the economics of education that subsidies to higher education have a regressive distributional effect. Given that relatively more children from wealthier families enroll in higher education, many economist assume that these subsidies to higher education have an unwanted distributional impact. This volume presents new empirical evidence for the cross-sectional point of view and provides an analytical framework for the longitudinal perspective. The present volume also analyzes the equity and efficiency effects of widely-discussed funding reforms and proposes a voluntary graduate tax.

• Higher-Education Funding
• Public Economics
• Tax Progression
• calculus
• economics of education
• education
• income distribution
• taxation

From the reviews of the first edition:

"The author emphasizes the role of windfall gains that occur from subsidizing higher education. … the main goal of this book is to assess the widely used tax-financed subsidy systems and understand the impact of different degrees and kinds of subsidization on both efficiency and equity. On the other side, there we can find a nice example of applied mathematics." (Krzysztof Piasecki, Zentralblatt MATH, Vol. 1086, 2006)

• Department of Economics (FB03), Johannes-Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany

  Salvatore Barbaro

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