What shapes the optimal degree of progressivity of the tax and transfer system? On the one hand, a progressive tax system can counteract inequality in initial conditions and substitute for imperfect private insurance against idiosyncratic earnings risk. At the same time, progressivity reduces...

If redistribution is distortionary, and if the income of skilled workers is due to knowledge-intensive activities and depends positively on intellectual property, a social planner which cares about income distribution may in principle want to use a reduction in Intellectual Property Rights...

This paper presents analysis of the implicit subsidies and repayment hardships of Thailand’s Student Loan Fund (SLF). Comparisons are made between the current SLF with alternative similar schemes, assuming different rates of interest and loan repayment periods. We find that the implicit...

This paper illustrates the extent of implicit taxpayer subsidies under four possible income contingent loan (ICL) arrangements for Thailand: TICAL, implemented in 2007 only, a variant of TICAL, and two alternative ICL schemes. The implicit taxpayer subsidy calculated with respect to average...

Several of the Youth Allowance eligibility criteria for independent status were subject to severe criticism in the recent Review of Australian Higher Education (2008). Specifically, it seems to be the case that many students are able to qualify for socalled “independent-at-home” financial...

The paper examines UK PhD completion and withdrawal rates, in a competing risks framework, using the 1986 National Survey of 1980 Graduates. The statistical problem of thresholding of completion data is also addressed. We argue that our results suggest that there are problems with the use of PhD...

We propose to model individual educational investments as a rational decision, maximizing expected utility, conditional on some characteristics observed by the student, under the combined risks affecting future wages and schooling duration. Assuming that students' attitudes toward risk can be...

Transition economies have an initial condition of high human capital relative to GDP per capita, giving them high growth potential. In the model, at a good equilibrium a large number of children of well-educated parents take advantage of their family backgrounds and invest substantially in their...

This paper studies a model of human capital accumulation with real wage rigidity. It is shown that the arbitrage condition between hiring a skilled versus an unskilled worker may be stated as a positive relationship between their relative unemployment rates. It may be the case that this locus is...

This paper presents an empirical study of birth-order and sibship sex-composition effects on educational achievement, and uses these variables as instruments to estimate returns to education, with the help of a rich set of individual data. Our sample includes more than 12,000 men and 10,000...