This paper offers an explanation for observed differences across countries in educational policies and in resulting interpersonal distributions of human capital. We analyse a general-equilibrium model in which, as a result of the apportionment of natural ability, nurturing, and publicly financed education, some people can be well endowed with human capital, whereas other people are poorly endowed with human capital. We assume that people can choose to be either producers or predators. An increase in a person's human capital makes predation a less attractive choice for that person. As a result, it is possible that by using some of their human capital to educate the poorly endowed people rather than to produce consumables the well endowed people can increase their own consumption. We also find that the nature of the educational policy that maximizes the consumption of the well endowed people depends on the ability of producers to enforce a collective choice of the amount of resources to be allocated to guarding against predators.
Download Info
To our knowledge, this item is not available for
download. To find whether it is available, there are three
options:
1. Check below under "Related research" whether another version of this item is available online.
2. Check on the provider's web page
whether it is in fact available.
3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be
available.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Brown University, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
97-30.
Find related papers by JEL classification: I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)
Herschel I. Grossman, 1999.
"Producers and Predators,"
NBER Working Papers
6499, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions: