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Education Policy and Intergenerational Transfers in Equilibrium

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Abstract

This paper compares partial and general equilibrium effects of alternative financial aid policies intended to promote college participation. We build an overlapping generations life-cycle, heterogeneous-agent, incomplete-markets model with education, labor supply, and consumption/saving decisions. Altruistic parents make inter vivos transfers to their children. Labor supply during college, government grants and loans, as well as private loans, complement parental transfers as sources of funding for college education. We find that the current financial aid system in the U.S. improves welfare, and removing it would reduce GDP by two percentage points in the long-run. Any further relaxation of government-sponsored loan limits would have no salient effects. The short-run partial equilibrium effects of expanding tuition grants (especially their need-based component) are sizeable. However, long-run general equilibrium effects are 3-4 times smaller. Every additional dollar of government grants crowds out 20-30 cents of parental transfers.

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File URL: http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/P/cd/d18b/d1887.pdf
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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University in its series Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers with number 1887.

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Length: 75 pages
Date of creation: Feb 2013
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1887

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Postal: Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA
Phone: (203) 432-3702
Fax: (203) 432-6167
Web page: http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/
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Postal: Cowles Foundation, Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA

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Keywords: Education; Education policy; Public finance; Financial aid; Inter vivos transfers; Altruism; Overlapping generations; Credit constraints; Labor supply; Equilibrium;

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  1. Education Policy and Intergenerational Transfers in Equilibrium
    by Christian Zimmermann in NEP-DGE blog on 2013-02-16 02:46:34

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