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Education Policies and Taxation without Commitment

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  • Sebastian Findeisen
  • Dominik Sachs

Abstract

We study the implications of limited commitment on education and tax policies set by benevolent governments. Consistent with real‐world practices, a government can decide to subsidize different levels of education at different rates. A lack of commitment, however, affects the optimal structure of education subsidies. The direction of the effect depends on how labor taxes are designed. With linear labor tax rates and a transfer for redistribution, subsidies become more progressive. By contrast, if the government is only constrained by informational asymmetries when designing taxes, subsidies become more regressive.

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  • Sebastian Findeisen & Dominik Sachs, 2018. "Education Policies and Taxation without Commitment," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 120(4), pages 1075-1099, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:scandj:v:120:y:2018:i:4:p:1075-1099
    DOI: 10.1111/sjoe.12246
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    Cited by:

    1. Koeniger, Winfried & Zanella, Carlo, 2022. "Opportunity and inequality across generations," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
    2. Spencer Bastani & Firouz Gahvari & Luca Micheletto, 2023. "Nonlinear taxation of income and education in the presence of income‐misreporting," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 25(4), pages 679-726, August.
    3. OBARA, Takuya, 2018. "Optimal human capital policies under the endogenous choice of educational types," CCES Discussion Paper Series 66_v2, Center for Research on Contemporary Economic Systems, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University.
    4. Findeisen, Sebastian & Sachs, Dominik, 2016. "Education and optimal dynamic taxation: The role of income-contingent student loans," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 1-21.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education

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