IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rco/dpaper/225.html

Optimal Need-Based Financial Aid

Author

Listed:
  • Colas, Mark

    (University of Oregon)

  • Findeisen, Sebastian

    (University of Konstanz)

  • Sachs, Dominik

    (LMU Munich)

Abstract

We study the optimal design of student financial aid as a function of parental income. We derive optimal financial aid formulas in a general model. For a simple model version, we derive mild conditions on primitives under which poorer students receive more aid even without distributional concerns. We quantitatively extend this result to an empirical model of selection into college for the United States that comprises multidimensional heterogeneity, endogenous parental transfers, dropout, labor supply in college, and uncertain returns. Optimal financial aid is strongly declining in parental income even without distributional concerns. Equity and efficiency go hand in hand.

Suggested Citation

  • Colas, Mark & Findeisen, Sebastian & Sachs, Dominik, 2019. "Optimal Need-Based Financial Aid," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 225, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    • Handle: RePEc:rco:dpaper:225
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://rationality-and-competition.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/225.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Zhifeng Cai & Jonathan Heathcote, 2022. "College Tuition and Income Inequality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(1), pages 81-121, January.
    3. Kristy Fan & Tyler J. Fisher & Andrew A. Samwick, 2025. "The Insurance Value of Financial Aid," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 20(4), pages 674-703, Fall.
    4. Bas Jacobs & Uwe Thuemmel, 2023. "Optimal linear income taxes and education subsidies under skill-biased technical change," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 30(6), pages 1529-1575, December.
    5. Mark Colas & Dominik Sachs, 2020. "The Indirect Fiscal Benefits of Low-Skilled Immigration," Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers 38, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    6. Koen Declercq & Erwin Ooghe, 2021. "Should Higher Education Be Subsidized More?," CESifo Working Paper Series 9377, CESifo.
    7. Youngmin Park, 2018. "Inequality in Parental Transfers, Borrowing Constraints, and Optimal Higher Education Subsidies," 2018 Meeting Papers 623, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    8. Aronsson, Thomas & Bastani, Spencer & Tayibov, Khayyam, 2021. "Social Exclusion and Optimal Redistribution," Umeå Economic Studies 1004, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    9. Arenas, Andreu & Malgouyres, Clément, 2018. "Countercyclical school attainment and intergenerational mobility," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 97-111.
    10. Mookherjee, Dilip & Napel, Stefan, 2021. "Welfare rationales for conditionality of cash transfers," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    11. Garrett Anstreicher, 2024. "Family Resources and Human Capital in Economic Downturns," Working Papers 24-15, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    12. Emily G. Moschini & Gajendran Raveendranathan, 2024. "College Financial Aid Application Frictions," Department of Economics Working Papers 2024-10, McMaster University.
    13. Spencer Bastani & Sebastian Koehne, 2024. "How Should Consumption Be Taxed?," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 80(3), pages 259-302.
    14. Mark Colas & Dominik Sachs, 2020. "The Indirect Fiscal Benefits of Low-Skilled Immigration," CESifo Working Paper Series 8604, CESifo.
    15. Youngmin Park, 2019. "Inequality in Parental Transfers and Optimal Need-Based Financial Aid," Staff Working Papers 19-7, Bank of Canada.
    16. Winfried Koeniger & Julien Prat, 2018. "Human Capital and Optimal Redistribution," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 27, pages 1-26, January.
    17. Aronsson, Thomas & Bastani, Spencer & Tayibov, Khayyam, 2025. "Redistribution and labor market inclusion," Working Paper Series 2025:19, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    18. Alessandra Casarico & Elena Del Rey & Jose I. Silva, 2023. "Child care costs, household liquidity constraints, and gender inequality," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 36(3), pages 1461-1487, July.
    19. Uta Bolt & Eric French & Jamie Hentall Maccuish & Cormac O’Dea, 2018. "Intergenerational Altruism and Transfers of Time and Money: A Life-cycle Perspective," Working Papers wp379, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    20. Manudeep Bhuller & Philipp Eisenhauer & Moritz Mendel, 2022. "Sequential Choices, Option Values, and the Returns to Education," Papers 2205.05444, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2024.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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
    • I22 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Educational Finance; Financial Aid
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • 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:rco:dpaper:225. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Viviana Lalli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://rationality-and-competition.de .

    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.