We compare a uniform voucher regime against the status quo mix of public and private education, focusing on the distribtuion of welfare gains and losses across households by income. We argue that the topping-up option available under uniform vouchers is not su¢ ciently valuable for the poorer...

Ten years after delegating the responsibility for school management and operation maintenance to local governments, the education funding system in Poland still faces open challenges of fundamental importance. Although the decentralisation of education is commonly considered a success, the...

Sweden has a school voucher system with universal coverage and full acceptance of corporate providers. Using a value added approach, we find that students at upper-secondary voucher schools on average score 0.06 standard deviations lower on externally graded standardized tests in first year core...

This paper develops a framework for estimating demand for school infrastructure investment that is financed through local bond referenda. Our framework takes explicit account of the irregular and discrete nature of local capital investment and the objective functions of local school boards. Our...

This paper evaluates general achievement effects of choice and competition between private and public schools at the nine-year school level by assessing a radical voucher reform that was implemented in Sweden in 1992. Starting from a situation where the public schools essentially were...

This paper evaluates school choice at the compulsory-school level by assessing a reform implemented in Sweden in 1992, which opened up for publicly funded but privately operated schools. In many local school markets, this reform led to a significant increase in the quantity of such schools as...

Most publicly provided services are multi-dimensional. This paper distinguishes between quantity and quality. In a model of majority voting with two competing political parties, the income effects with respect to quantity, quality, and other elements in the utility functions of the voters have...

Kenya has experienced a rapid expansion of the education system partly due to high government expenditure on education. Despite the high level of expenditure on education, primary school enrolment has been declining since early 1990s and until 2003 when gross primary school enrolment increased...

Ten years after delegating the responsibility for school management and operation maintenance to local governments, the education funding system in Poland still faces open challenges of fundamental importance. Although the decentralisation of education is commonly considered a success, the...