Should we transfer resources from college to basic education?

Résumé

This paper analyzes public intervention in education, taking into account the existence of two educational levels: basic education and college education. The government decides per capita expenditure at each level and the subsidy for college education. We explore the effects of transferring resources from one level to the other on equity and efficiency, where efficiency refers to average productivity of college graduates. Except in the special case in which the economy is at the Equity-Efficiency Frontier (EEF), there is always a policy reform that increases the productivity of college graduates without excluding the talented poor from college. For developed countries, this policy consists of transferring resources from college to basic education.