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The Political Economy of Education
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 192

The Political Economy of Education

  • Type: Book
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  • Published: 2004-10-22
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  • Publisher: MIT Press

A theoretical framework for analyzing the complex relationship of education, growth, and income distribution. The dominant role played by the state in the financing, regulation, and provision of primary and secondary education reflects the widely-held belief that education is necessary for personal and societal well-being. The economic organization of education depends on political as well as market mechanisms to resolve issues that arise because of contrasting views on such matters as income inequality, social mobility, and diversity. This book provides the theoretical framework necessary for understanding the political economy of education—the complex relationship of education, economic ...

Institutions and Norms in Economic Development
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 251

Institutions and Norms in Economic Development

  • Type: Book
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  • Published: 2006
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  • Publisher: MIT Press

Experts address "the development puzzle"--unprecedented growth coupled with unequal distribution of that growth across different countries--and focus on the importance of institutional arrangements and norms and culture.

The Political Economy of Public Spending on Education, Inequality, and Growth
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 16

The Political Economy of Public Spending on Education, Inequality, and Growth

Public provision of education has often been perceived as universal and egalitarian, but in reality it is not. Political pressure typically results in incidence bias in favor of the rich. The author argues that the bias in political influence resulting from extreme income inequalities is particularly likely to generate an incidence bias, which we call social exclusion. This may then lead to a feedback mechanism whereby inequality in the incidence of public spending on education breeds higher income inequality, thus generating multiple equilibria: with social exclusion and high inequality; and with social inclusion and relatively low inequality. The author also shows that the latter equilibrium leads to higher long-run growth than the former. An extension of the basic model reveals that spillover effects among members of social groups differentiated by race or ethnicity may reinforce the support for social exclusion.

The Political Economy of Education
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 169

The Political Economy of Education

  • Type: Book
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  • Published: 2005
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  • Publisher: Mit Press

The dominant role played by the state in the financing, regulation, and provision of primary and secondary education reflects the widely-held belief that education is necessary for personal and societal well-being. The economic organization of education depends on political as well as market mechanisms to resolve issues that arise because of contrasting views on such matters as income inequality, social mobility, and diversity. This book provides the theoretical framework necessary for understanding the political economy of education -- the complex relationship of education, economic growth, and income distribution -- and for formulating effective policies to improve the financing and provis...

Governance and Economic Growth
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 20

Governance and Economic Growth

Because protection of property rights cannot be appropriated by any individual, it is widely recognized as being the state's responsibility. Moreover, recent empirical evidence suggests that protection of property rights leads to higher investment levels and faster growth. The extent of property rights protection differs significantly across countries. The author integrates the emergence of property rights within a simple growth framework. Drawing on North (1990), he presents a model where economic performance and enforcement of property rights may reinforce each other. Initial conditions determine the economy's convergence to a high-income or a low-income steady state. Existing empirical evidence offers tentative support for this theory.

National Income and Its Distribution
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 44

National Income and Its Distribution

Does the distribution of income within a country become more equal as it grows richer? This paper uses plausibly exogenous variations in trade-weighted world income and international oil price shocks as instruments for within-country variations in countries real GDP per capita to examine this issue for a large sample of advanced and developing countries. Our findings indicate that increases in national income have a significant moderating effect on income inequality: a one percent increase in real GDP per capita, on average, reduces the Gini coefficient by around 0.08 percentage points, a result that is robust across income levels, different time horizons, and alternative estimation techniques. From a policy perspective, our results suggest that education policies that promote equity and help individuals continue on to higher levels of education could help reduce income inequality.

Democracy and Income Inequality An Empirical Analysis
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 50

Democracy and Income Inequality An Empirical Analysis

Ideology, as proxied by a country's dominant religion, seems to be related to inequality. In Judeo-Christian societies increased democratization appears to lower inequality; in Muslim and Confucian societies it has an insignificant effect. One reason for this difference may be that Muslim and Confucian societies rely on informal transfers to reach the desired level of inequality, while Judeo-Christian societies, where family ties are weaker, use political action.

The Distributional Bias of Public Education
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 28

The Distributional Bias of Public Education

While public education is often intended to be progressive in its effects on income distribution, in reality its incidence is often skewed toward the rich. This paper argues that the extent of this bias is directly related to institutional weaknesses in governance. We present a simple dynamic model where weak governing institutions allow the rich to be more effective in appropriating a larger share of public education spending thereby preventing inequality reduction. The empirical part provides tentative support for this view, showing that the progressiveness of public education spending is related to the strength of governance.

Productivity and Tax Evasion
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 33

Productivity and Tax Evasion

The extent of tax compliance has important implications for revenue yield, efficiency and the fairness of any tax system. Tax evasion undermines revenue collection, distorts competition, and undermines a country’s development prospects. In this paper, we investigate whether higher productivity causally leads to lower tax evasion. We first present stylized facts consistent with this view and develop a model that illustrates one potential transmission channel. Second, we test the model predictions at the firm level using the self-reported share of declared income as proxy for tax evasion for a large sample of emerging and developing economies. Our results suggests that productivity improvements by firms can lead to lower tax evasion.

What Causes Firms to Hide Output? The Determinants of Informality
  • Language: en
  • Pages: 33

What Causes Firms to Hide Output? The Determinants of Informality

In many developing countries, a significant part of economic activity takes place in the informal sector. Earlier work has examined the determinants of the size of the informal sector, focusing separately on factors such as tax and regulation burden, financial market development, and the quality of the legal system. We revisit this issue by using an integrated dataset which contains rich information on all these aspects. Testing the channels affecting the degree of informality, we find evidence that all previously identified factors indeed play a role in driving informality. In particular, and consistent with the suggested theoretical model, we find support for the significance of the quality of the legal system.