IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/oxdevs/v40y2012i2p261-271.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public Expenditure on Education and Skill Formation: Is There a Simple Rule to Maximize Skills?

Author

Listed:
  • Rossana Patron
  • Marcel Vaillant

Abstract

The ratio of skilled-to-unskilled labour stocks in the economy is widely acknowledged to have an important role for development. Can education policy affect the evolution of this ratio? This paper shows that it can: it also shows that the effect of education policy, for a given budget size, depends on the allocation rule across educational levels, particularly in the presence of systemic inefficiency. Using a stylized hierarchical education model, the theoretical conditions under which the allocation rule would favour the accumulation of skills are determined. The analysis has implication for policymakers in developing countries, where skill formation is much needed, because it shows that their allocation rules usually violate the maximization condition by assigning higher-than-optimal resources to higher education.

Suggested Citation

  • Rossana Patron & Marcel Vaillant, 2012. "Public Expenditure on Education and Skill Formation: Is There a Simple Rule to Maximize Skills?," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(2), pages 261-271, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:oxdevs:v:40:y:2012:i:2:p:261-271
    DOI: 10.1080/13600818.2012.678323
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13600818.2012.678323
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13600818.2012.678323?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Romer, Paul M, 1986. "Increasing Returns and Long-run Growth," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(5), pages 1002-1037, October.
    2. Robert A. Driskill & Andrew W. Horowitz, 2002. "Investment in Hierarchical Human Capital," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(1), pages 48-58, February.
    3. Su, Xuejuan, 2006. "Endogenous determination of public budget allocation across education stages," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 438-456, December.
    4. Su, Xuejuan, 2004. "The allocation of public funds in a hierarchical educational system," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(12), pages 2485-2510, December.
    5. Lucas, Robert Jr., 1988. "On the mechanics of economic development," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 3-42, July.
    6. Birdsall, Nancy & Londoño de la Cuesta, Juan Luis & O'Connell, Lesley, 1998. "Education in Latin America: demand and distribution are factors that matter," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), December.
    7. Chris Papageorgiou, 2003. "Distinguishing Between the Effects of Primary and Post‐primary Education on Economic Growth," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(4), pages 622-635, November.
    8. Robert Driskill & Andrew W. Horowitz & Fabio Méndez, 2009. "Hierarchical Human Capital and Economic Growth: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 165(4), pages 723-743, December.
    9. Gemmell, Norman, 1996. "Evaluating the Impacts of Human Capital Stocks and Accumulation on Economic Growth: Some New Evidence," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 58(1), pages 9-28, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dosmagambet, Yergali, 2015. "Optimal policy for secondary education in developing countries," PFH Forschungspapiere/Research Papers 2015/01, PFH Private University of Applied Sciences, Göttingen.
    2. Xu, Deyi & Sheraz, Muhammad & Hassan, Arshad & Sinha, Avik & Ullah, Saif, 2022. "Financial development, renewable energy and CO2 emission in G7 countries: New evidence from non-linear and asymmetric analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    3. Vincenzo Prete & Claudio Zoli, 2019. "The political economy of educational policies and inequality of opportunity," Working Papers 2019:14, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rossana Patron & Marcel Vaillant, 2011. "Public expenditure on education and skill formation: are there simple rules to maximise skills?," Investigaciones de Economía de la Educación volume 6, in: Antonio Caparrós Ruiz (ed.), Investigaciones de Economía de la Educación 6, edition 1, volume 6, chapter 23, pages 387-397, Asociación de Economía de la Educación.
    2. repec:zbw:rwidps:0030 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Arano, Kathleen G. & Srinivasan, Arun K., 2021. "Local Economies and Economic Growth, Does Location Matter? A Spatial Analysis in the Great Lakes Region," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 51(1), June.
    4. Middendorf Torge, 2006. "Human Capital and Economic Growth in OECD Countries," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 226(6), pages 670-686, December.
    5. Adejumo, Oluwabunmi O. & Asongu, Simplice A. & Adejumo, Akintoye V., 2021. "Education enrolment rate vs employment rate: Implications for sustainable human capital development in Nigeria," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    6. Trofimov, Ivan D. & Baawi, Nurulhana A., 2020. "Human Capital: State of the Field and Ways to Extend the Concept," MPRA Paper 107039, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Muhammad Ali & Abiodun Egbetokun & Manzoor Hussain Memon, 2018. "Human Capital, Social Capabilities and Economic Growth," Economies, MDPI, vol. 6(1), pages 1-18, January.
    8. Brotherhood, Luiz & Delalibera, Bruno R., 2020. "Minding the gap between schools and universities," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    9. Serge Coulombe & Jean-Francois Tremblay, 2009. "Education, Productivity and Economic Growth: A Selective Review of the Evidence," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 18, pages 3-24, Spring.
    10. Togbenu, Fo-Kossi Edem, 2017. "Un réexamen de la relation entre dépenses publiques et croissance économique dans les pays en développements à partir d'un modèle de panel dynamique [A reexamination of the relation between public ," MPRA Paper 81376, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Vincenzo Andrietti & Xuejuan Su, 2019. "Education curriculum and student achievement: theory and evidence," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(1), pages 4-19, January.
    12. Michael Kaganovich & Xuejuan Su, 2019. "College curriculum, diverging selectivity, and enrollment expansion," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 67(4), pages 1019-1050, June.
    13. Viaene, Jean-Marie & Zilcha, Itzhak, 2013. "Public funding of higher education," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 78-89.
    14. Valerio Mendoza, Octasiano Miguel & Borsi, Mihály Tamás & Comim, Flavio, 2022. "Human capital dynamics in China: Evidence from a club convergence approach," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    15. Johanna Vogel, 2015. "The two faces of R&D and human capital: Evidence from Western European regions," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 94(3), pages 525-551, August.
    16. Elisa S. Brezis & Joel Hellier, 2016. "Social Mobility and Higher-Education Policy," Working Papers 095, "Carlo F. Dondena" Centre for Research on Social Dynamics (DONDENA), Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi.
    17. Kluge, Jan & Lappoehn, Sarah & Plank, Kerstin, 2020. "The Determinants of Economic Competitiveness," IHS Working Paper Series 24, Institute for Advanced Studies.
    18. Adrien Montalbo, 2022. "Primary education and economic growth in nineteenth-century France," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 16(2), pages 277-332, May.
    19. Antonio Paradiso & Saten Kumar & B. Bhaskara Rao, 2013. "The growth effects of education in Australia," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(27), pages 3843-3852, September.
    20. Maria Adelaide Duarte & Marta Simões, 2004. "Human capital, mechanisms of technological diffusion and the role of technological shocks in the speed of diffusion. Evidence from a panel of Mediterranean countries," Notas Económicas, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra, issue 20, pages 102-134, December.
    21. Hilary Steedman, 1996. "Measuring the Quality of Educational Outputs: A Note," CEP Discussion Papers dp0302, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I22 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Educational Finance; Financial Aid
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:oxdevs:v:40:y:2012:i:2:p:261-271. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/CODS20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.