IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucn/wpaper/200302.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Education choice under uncertainty and public policy

Author

Listed:
  • Vincent (Vincent Peter) Hogan
  • Ian Walker

Abstract

We analyse how progressive taxation and education subsidies affect schooling decisions when the returns to education are stochastic. We use the theory of real options to solve the problem of education choice in a dynamic, life-cycle consistent, stochastic model. We show that education attainment will be an increasing function of the risk associated with education. Furthermore, this result holds whether or not agents can borrow in order to pay for education and regardless of the degree of risk aversion. We also examine the link between consumption over the life-cycle and education choice to show that higher initial wealth will usually - but not always - have a positive effect on education attainment. Finally we show that progressive taxes will tend to reduce education attainment for the poor but increase it for the rich.

Suggested Citation

  • Vincent (Vincent Peter) Hogan & Ian Walker, 2003. "Education choice under uncertainty and public policy," Working Papers 200302, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    • Handle: RePEc:ucn:wpaper:200302
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10197/932
    File Function: First version, 2003
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eaton, Jonathan & Rosen, Harvey S, 1980. "Taxation, Human Capital, and Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(4), pages 705-715, September.
    2. Trostel, Philip A, 1993. "The Effect of Taxation on Human Capital," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 101(2), pages 327-350, April.
    3. Keane, Michael P & Wolpin, Kenneth I, 1997. "The Career Decisions of Young Men," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(3), pages 473-522, June.
    4. James J. Heckman & Lance J. Lochner & Petra E. Todd, 2003. "Fifty Years of Mincer Earnings Regressions," NBER Working Papers 9732, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Harmon, Colm & Hogan, Vincent & Walker, Ian, 2003. "Dispersion in the economic return to schooling," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 205-214, April.
    6. Williams, Joseph T, 1979. "Uncertainty and the Accumulation of Human Capital over the Life Cycle," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 52(4), pages 521-548, October.
    7. Jacob A. Mincer, 1974. "Schooling and Earnings," NBER Chapters, in: Schooling, Experience, and Earnings, pages 41-63, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Heckman, James J & Lochner, Lance & Taber, Christopher, 1998. "Tax Policy and Human-Capital Formation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(2), pages 293-297, May.
    9. Judd, Kenneth L, 1998. "Taxes, Uncertainty, and Human Capital," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(2), pages 289-292, May.
    10. Uusitalo, R. & Conneely, K., 1998. "Estimating Heterogeneous Treatment Effects in the Becker Schooling Model," University of Helsinki, Department of Economics 435, Department of Economics.
    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. Migali, Giuseppe, 2006. "Funding Higher Education and Wage Uncertainty: Income Contingent Loan Versus Mortgate Loan," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 740, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    2. Jacobs, Bas, 2007. "Real options and human capital investment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(6), pages 913-925, December.
    3. Hou, Linke & Wang, Xiaobing & Yu, Xiaohua, 2011. "Rational Expectation and Education Rewarding: The Case of Chinese Off-Farm Wage Employment," 2011 International Congress, August 30-September 2, 2011, Zurich, Switzerland 114530, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    4. Frank M. Fossen & Daniela Glocker, 2009. "Expected Future Earnings, Taxation, and University Enrollment: A Microeconometric Model with Uncertainty," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 241, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    5. Migali, Giuseppe, 2012. "Funding higher education and wage uncertainty: Income contingent loan versus mortgage loan," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 871-889.
    6. Pedro Martins & Jim Jin, 2010. "Firm-level social returns to education," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 23(2), pages 539-558, March.
    7. Corrado Andini, 2009. "On the return-risk link in education," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(3), pages 307-314.
    8. Andini, Corrado & Pereira, Pedro T., 2007. "Full-time Schooling, Part-time Schooling, and Wages: Returns and Risks in Portugal," IZA Discussion Papers 2651, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Takashi Oshio & Masaya Yasuoka, 2009. "How Long Should We Stay In Education If Ability Is Screened?," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(3), pages 409-431, July.
    10. Hogan, Vincent & Walker, Ian, 2007. "Education choice under uncertainty: Implications for public policy," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(6), pages 894-912, December.
    11. Santiago Budria, 2010. "Schooling and the distribution of wages in the European private and public sectors," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(8), pages 1045-1054.

    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. Hogan, Vincent & Walker, Ian, 2007. "Education choice under uncertainty: Implications for public policy," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(6), pages 894-912, December.
    2. Chaitali Sinha, 2014. "Human Capital and Public Policy," South Asian Journal of Macroeconomics and Public Finance, , vol. 3(1), pages 79-125, June.
    3. Stacey Chen, 2003. "Does COllege Attendance Increase Wage Volatility," Discussion Papers 03-01, University at Albany, SUNY, Department of Economics.
    4. Bilkic, N. & Gries, T. & Pilichowski, M., 2012. "Stay in school or start working? — The human capital investment decision under uncertainty and irreversibility," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 706-717.
    5. Beladi, Hamid & Sinha, Chaitali & Kar, Saibal, 2016. "To educate or not to educate: Impact of public policies in developing countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 94-101.
    6. Poterba, James M., 2002. "Taxation, risk-taking, and household portfolio behavior," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 17, pages 1109-1171, Elsevier.
    7. Brodaty, Thomas & Gary-Bobo, Robert J. & Prieto, Ana, 2014. "Do risk aversion and wages explain educational choices?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 125-148.
    8. Harmon, Colm & Hogan, Vincent & Walker, Ian, 2003. "Dispersion in the economic return to schooling," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 205-214, April.
    9. Philip Trostel & Ian Walker, 2006. "Education and Work," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(4), pages 377-399.
    10. Berger, Johannes & Strohner, Ludwig, 2020. "Documentation of the PUblic Policy Model for Austria and other European countries (PUMA)," Research Papers 11, EcoAustria – Institute for Economic Research.
    11. Lance Lochner & Alexander Monge-Naranjo, 2002. "Human Capital Formation with Endogenous Credit Constraints," NBER Working Papers 8815, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Henderson, Daniel J. & Polachek, Solomon W. & Wang, Le, 2011. "Heterogeneity in schooling rates of return," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 1202-1214.
    13. Nikolov, Plamen & Jimi, Nusrat & Chang, Jerray, 2020. "The Importance of Cognitive Domains and the Returns to Schooling in South Africa: Evidence from Two Labor Surveys," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    14. Paul A. David, 2005. "Reforming the Taxation of Human Capital: A Modest Proposal for Promoting Economic Growth," HEW 0502002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Luis Diaz‐Serrano & Joop Hartog & Helena Skyt Nielsen, 2008. "Compensating Wage Differentials for Schooling Risk in Denmark," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 110(4), pages 711-731, December.
    16. Nicholas Apergis, 2015. "Labor Income Tax and Output in a Panel of Central and Eastern European Countries: A Long-Run Perspective," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 21(1), pages 1-12, March.
    17. Mark Huggett & Gustavo Ventura & Amir Yaron, 2011. "Sources of Lifetime Inequality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 2923-2954, December.
    18. Tian, Binbin & Lin, Chao & Zhang, Wenwen & Feng, Chen, 2022. "Tax Incentives, On-the-job Training, and Human Capital Accumulation: Evidence from China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    19. repec:lan:wpaper:4789 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Anna Zaharieva, 2014. "On-the-Job Search and Optimal Schooling under Uncertainty and Irreversibility," Politica economica, Società editrice il Mulino, issue 2-3, pages 299-339.
    21. Carl Sanders & Christopher Taber, 2012. "Life-Cycle Wage Growth and Heterogeneous Human Capital," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 399-425, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Education choice; Dynamic optimization; Optimal stopping; Uncertainty; Education and state--Great Britain; Human capital; Education and state--Europe;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • C61 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Optimization Techniques; Programming Models; Dynamic Analysis
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

    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:ucn:wpaper:200302. 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: Nicolas Clifton (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/educdie.html .

    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.