This study measures college quality by the amount by which the college adds to the salary of its students above what the median market value would be for the same majors and student quality. Commonly used national rankings of colleges such as U.S. News and World Report or Forbes are heavily biased by a college's average salaries and the quality of…

Education spending mandates are popular around the world, especially among central governments in large, decentralized nations, who find that they may be useful in influencing varied local fiscal behavior. I evaluate Indonesia's education spending mandate policy, which insists that district governments allocate at least 20 percent of their budgets…

This study uses data on educational expenditure, including specific types of educational expenditure, from the 2009 Socioeconomic Survey of Thailand to investigate gender bias in the allocation of educational resources. Empirical Engel's curves are estimated to test for gender bias. The results show that girls receive more education expenditure…

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the potential impact of the reform designed to decentralise public education in Italy, currently under discussion, on interregional redistribution. The central government has always played a prominent financial and administrative role in the provision of compulsory education in Italy. This has had a strong…

This paper constructs a simple two-tier education framework to analyze the effectiveness of multiple language instruction. Suppose that the government attempts to maximize the average post-education productivity. It is shown that the optimal education policy requires different languages of instruction be adopted in the education system. The…

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, although many cost function studies have been done in developed countries, there has been no such study for the developing countries such as Vietnam. This paper will make the first attempt at conducting a cost function analysis for Vietnam. Second, it also demonstrates how the results of the cost…

This paper sets out a new budget allocation formula for schools, designed to achieve a more equitable distribution of educational achievement. In addition to needs-based elements, the suggested composite allocation formula includes an improvement component, whereby schools receive budgetary allocations based on a new incentive measure developed in…

The present paper studies the general equilibrium implications of two types of education policy in an overlapping generations model. We examine education transfers, which augment inherited private education spending, and public investment on economy-wide human capital, which provides externalities to individual human capital accumulation. The…

In the international context, the quality of public primary education in Indonesia is sub-standard. The assumption of officials at all levels of government is that a significant increase in funding will be required to improve education performance. The analysis in this paper shows that money does indeed matter for the attainment of primary…

It is well established that girls outperform boys in schools, but the available empirical evidence suggests that the determinants of the gender achievement gap are poorly understood. The present paper looks inside families for explanations. Rich data for families with children in the lower secondary school in Norway are used to investigate whether…

While there is a wealth of research on school finance equity and adequacy, and school finance theory clearly documents differences between the two concepts, no study has examined whether the reforms engendered by each approach actually differ in terms of resource distribution. The present study examines the issues using district-level data on…

The recent court decision in Ohio requires that school districts spend a sufficient amount to insure that students are able to meet outcome objectives. Determination of adequate spending is complicated by the influence that fixed socioeconomic factors have on outcome provision; adequate spending will vary depending on the harshness of the…

A considerable sum of money is allocated to UK universities on the basis of Research Assessment Exercise performance. In this paper we analyse the impact of the two main funding models on the intra-territorial and intra-regional allocation of funds. We also examine the effect of the present system of territorial safety nets and discuss the impact…

Direct provision of public services can alter the balance of resources across income groups. We focus on the issues arising when taking account of the impact of publicly provided education services across the income distribution. We combine OECD information on spending per student in particular levels of the education system with micro data from…

In 1994, the newly elected Government in Malawi abolished primary school fees. Using household survey data from 1990/91 and 1997/98, this paper assesses the impact this major policy change, combined with increased Government spending on education, has had on access to schooling by the poor. This paper shows that enrolment rates have increased…