Insuring Educational Risk: "It is the Quality of Education"

Rechts-, Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungswissenschaftliche Sektion

Fachbereich

Wirtschaftswissenschaften

Diskussionspapiere der DFG-

Forschergruppe (Nr.: 3468269275):

Heterogene Arbeit: Positive und Normative Aspekte der Qualifikationsstruktur der Arbeit

Dirk Schindler Benjamin Weigert

Insuring Educational Risk:

“It Is the Quality of Education”

December 2008

Diskussionspapier Nr. 08/06

http://www.wiwi.uni-konstanz.de/forschergruppewiwi/

Konstanzer Online-Publikations-System (KOPS)

Diskussionspapier der Forschergruppe (Nr.: 3468269275) “Heterogene Arbeit: Positive und Normative Aspekte der Qualifikationsstruktur der Arbeit“

Nr. 08/06, December 2008

Insuring Educational Risk:

“It Is the Quality of Education”

Abstract:

We develop a model of education where individuals face educational risk. Successfully entering the skilled labor sector depends on individual effort in education and public resources, but educational risk still causes (income) inequality. We show that in a Second-best setting improving quality of education, i.e., the probability of success, by public funding of the educational sector matters more than granting direct income transfers from skilled workers to unskilled ones. Thus, ex ante insurance is more important than ex post income redistribution. These results are even strengthened, in case (distortionary) skill-specific taxes are available.

JEL Klassifikation : H21, I2, J2

Schlüsselwörter : human capital investment, endogenous risk, learning effort, optimal taxation, public education Download/Reference : http://www.wiwi.uni-konstanz.de/forschergruppewiwi/

Benjamin Weigert

Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen Licher Straße 66

35394 Giessen Germany

mail: benjamin.weigert@wirtschaft.uni-giessen.de phone: +49-621-1235-283

fax: +49-621-1235-225

Dirk Schindler

University of Konstanz Faculty of Economics Fach 133

78457 Konstanz Germany

mail: Dirk.Schindler@uni-konstanz.de phone: +49-7531-883691

fax: +49-7531-884101

Insuring Educational Risk:

“It Is the Quality of Education” ^∗

Dirk Schindler

Universität Konstanz and CESifo Benjamin Weigert

Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen December 17, 2008

Abstract

We develop a model of education where individuals face educational risk. Successfully entering the skilled labor sector depends on individual effort in education and public resources, but educational risk still causes (in- come) inequality. We show that in a Second-best setting improving quality of education, i.e., the probability of success, by public funding of the educa- tional sector matters more than granting direct income transfers from skilled workers to unskilled ones. Thus, ex ante insurance is more important than ex post income redistribution. These results are even strengthened, in case (distortionary) skill-specific taxes are available.

JEL-Classification: H21, I2, J2

Keywords: human capital investment, endogenous risk, learning effort, optimal taxation, public education

∗We are indebted to Alexander Haupt, Bas Jacobs, Laurence Jacquet, Leo Kaas, Tim Lohse, Normann Lorenz, Christian Lumpe, Agnar Sandmo, Guttorm Schjelderup and Stefan Zink as well as participants of seminars and conferences in Gießen, Warwick, Oslo, München, Konstanz, Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Gent for valuable comments. The usual disclaimer applies.

†Corresponding author: Dirk Schindler, Universität Konstanz, Fach D 133, 78457 Kon-

1 Introduction

For more than 30 years, rising wage inequality, especially between incomes in the skilled labor sector versus those in the unskilled one, is observed, see, e.g., Krugman (1995) or Katz and Autor (1999). This type of inequality is also accom- panied by income risk. The reason is that employment as skilled worker requires both successful graduation in the higher education sector and finding a suitable job later on. Both is by far not guaranteed, see, e.g., OECD (2007, Indicators A3 and A8). Accordingly, (educational) risk of failure to enter the skilled sector is a salient feature of human capital investment and distributional inequality interacts with income risk.

What happens then to those households, who fail and end up as unskilled, and how can welfare of the unskilled workers be increased in an inequality-averse so- ciety? Different approaches to this problem can be observed: in welfare policies the main focus is on ex post redistribution via direct income transfers as, e.g., the earned income tax credits in the USA. An additional strategy is to implement minimum wages, which are in place, for instance, in the U.K. and in France.

A more recent political agenda is to foster success in education, i.e., to decrease drop-out rates (especially at schools) and to ensure that the major part of the popu- lation successfully attends higher education. This is part of the so-called renewed

‘Lisbon-agenda’ in the EU, announced in 2005 as strategy for growth and jobs (EU-Council, 2005).

However, in the political debate, there seems to be no consensus on what the best strategy is and the implementation of the ‘Lisbon educational offensive’ in the EU member countries is doing poorly according to an EU press release in Oc- tober 2007 (EU-Commission, 2007). Even more amazing – and to the best of our knowledge – these topics have been entirely neglected in the economic literature, although stylized facts strongly indicate that drop-out rates are non-negligible and that higher education has enormous effects on the labor market perspectives of households (OECD, 2007, Indicator A8). Consequently, the very important, but still pending question is: Should the government insure ex ante by improving qual- ity of education, i.e., by increasing the probability to get a job in the skilled sector, or ex post by means of income redistribution? Note in doing so that the former

is not about equality of opportunities, but provides another insurance device in a risky economy, namely decreasing income risk for all individuals by increasing their success probability. This is relevant even if individuals are identical ex ante regarding ability, endowment, preferences, etc., because the educational system still acts as a ‘filter’ (Konrad, 2004), generating individual educational (success) risk and ex post inequality.

This paper shows that in a Second-best world, where learning effort cannot be controlled by the government and collecting tax revenue induces distortions, it is more important to improve ex ante quality of education (i.e., the ‘filter mech- anism’), measured as the success probability to graduate, than to provide ex post income insurance by direct (cash) transfers from the skilled to the unskilled.

This results holds, if there is only a linear wage tax available. It is even strengthened in case the government has more information available and can apply skill-specific taxes. In any case, quality of education is enhanced by an improved resource endowment in the educational sector – which simultaneously counteracts tax-induced negative incentive effects in learning effort. If available, the combi- nation of skill-specific tuition fees and public funding of the educational sector simultaneously allows for redistribution and insurance at lower costs compared to wage taxation. Still, the focus remains on ex ante insurance instead of direct income transfers.

In short, the main intuition is: Collecting revenue in a Second-best world is costly, but spending the revenue in the educational sector instead of granting in- come transfers, ceteris paribus, mitigates distortions in learning effort and de- creases the marginal costs of taxation, whereas both ways of spending decrease income risks and increase welfare.

The main idea behind the outline of our models rests on (i) that wage inequal- ity interacts with educational risk and (ii) that learning effort (howtime is spent at school respectively at university) and resource investment in the educational sector endogenize the risk of failure to enter the skilled sector, opening another channel for governmental policy.

The accelerating wage inequality since the 1980s is driven by globalization and increasing international trade (Krugman, 1995) and – to the most part – by skill-biased technological change (Katz and Autor, 1999). Both are seen as either

putting pressure on low-skilled wages and favoring skilled labor (the “American way”) or creating unemployment in the low-skilled sector, if there are labor market rigidities (the “European way”). Jacobs (2004) supposes the wage differential to increase even more in the future, due to the growth rate of skilled labor supply lacking behind the demand for skilled workers – implying that wages can be even less forecasted than by now.

As future wages can hardly be predicted, when investing in human capital,¹ wage inequality and educational risk are intertwined. Consequently, educational risk can be twofold (Levhari and Weiss, 1974): the most obvious is the risk to fail graduation, implying that most of the resources invested might be lost. The other type of risk is the uncertainty about future wages and employment opportunities.

Analytically, the cases of failed graduation and failed (well-payed) employ- ment can be described in the very same way as uncertain future wages, if the probability of failure is exogenous. However, to assume that this probability is exogenous for individuals is not plausible. Therefore it appears reasonable that to some degree the probability to graduate and to get a job as skilled worker is the result of individual choices such as learning effort. Obviously, the effort cho- sen by individuals will, amongst others, depend on the quality of the educational system and on public resources spent on education.

Endogenizing learning effort then opens another channel, through which gov- ernmental intervention both via public spending and tax revenue collection in- fluences market outcome: On the one hand revenue collection can have negative effects on learning efforts, increasing the risk of failure in education and with it ex post inequality. On the other hand, the government gains another insurance device in increasing the success probability and providingex anteinsurance.

In order to analyze these topics, we extend the Andersson and Konrad (2003b)- type two-period model, where the individuals first decide on their learning effort.

This decision determines their success probability in higher education and in en- tering the skilled sector. Then risk realizes and the individuals choose their labor supply either as skilled workers or as unskilled ones. The benevolent government

1See, e.g., Carneiro et al. (2003) showing for high-school and college graduates that the over- whelming part of variance in returns to education cannot be predicted by students at the time of making their investments.

can use a proportional wage tax and skill-specific taxes in order to finance both a general lump-sum transfer and public funding of the education system. Public educational spending is assumed to increase the success probability, because an enhanced quality in the educational sector, e.g., an increased number of teachers at university, improves the learning technology.

The proceeding is as follows. The next section contains a short overview on related literature. In section 3, we present the model, and examine household behavior in the fourth section. Section 5 then establishes the First-best allocation as benchmark case, whilst section 6 introduces public policy and determines the optimal tax and education policy. Section 7 concludes.

2 Related Literature

Our paper builds on and extends a small literature on optimal tax policy in case of risky human capital investment and wage uncertainty. It is well known from the work by Eaton and Rosen (1980a,b) as well as from an extended model by Hamilton (1987) that it is optimal to implement a distorting wage tax, because the insurance provided will outweigh the excess burden, if wage income is subject to (idiosyncratic) risk. Hamilton (1987) argues as well that additionally capital taxa- tion as indirect education subsidy can be welfare enhancing for efficiency reasons.

A similar result with respect to wage taxation is derived in Kanbur (1980), where households have to decide, whether to work in a risky entrepreneur sector or to earn deterministic wage income as employee. There are no redistributive motives, because labor market equilibrium implies that the expected utilities of all house- holds are equalized, but differentiated taxation provides insurance. The result is extended by Boadway et al. (1991) to an optimal linear income tax scheme.

Following the ‘New Dynamic Public Finance’-approach, da Costa and Maestri (2007) and Anderberg (2008) build on the Eaton-Rosen-Hamilton model, but now assume that human capital investments can be verified by the government so that it can employ non-linear education policies, besides non-linear policy instruments on labor income and capital income. These authors confirm that there is optimally a role for capital income taxation. Similarly, social insurance purposes call for a tax-wedge in labor supply. However, da Costa and Maestri (2007) and Ander-

berg (2008) differ as to whether education policy should ensure social efficiency in human capital investment (da Costa and Maestri) or that aggregate human cap- ital investment should optimally be distorted (Anderberg).² Other recent papers, dealing with risky human capital formation and risky skilled labor income, are, e.g., García-Peñalosa and Wälde (2000), Wigger and von Weizsäcker (2001), and Jacobs and van Wijnbergen (2007). Basically, all these contributions show that a graduate tax, accompanied by some direct education subsidies, is optimal in or- der to insure individuals against income risks. Anderberg and Andersson (2003) show that education itself can have an insurance effect, if the government chooses educational investment, and should in this case be overprovided, because this also increases tax revenue.

Common to all these papers on human capital risk and taxation is that they treat the risk as exogenous. There is no choice on learning effort, and therefore no effect of taxation on the probability distribution itself.³

Mostly related to our modeling approach is the work by Andersson and Konrad (2003a,b), who also examine endogenous learning effort in a risky setting. They focus on possible private insurance instead of governmental instruments (Anders- son and Konrad, 2003a) as well as on hold-up problems and time-consistent taxa- tion in case of a Leviathan government (Andersson and Konrad, 2003b). However, in contrast to our analysis they do not consider direct public spending in the edu- cational sector and endogenous labor supply in the working period.⁴ Hence, they are not able to deal with the issue of providing ex ante versus ex post insurance against educational and income risk.

2As in deterministic models with heterogenous agents, the shape of the earnings function mat- ters, here. Moreover, the general claim in da Costa and Maestri (2007) is invalid due to an error in calculations, as Anderberg (2008) shows.

3The exception is Wigger and von Weizsäcker (2001), who briefly examine the case of ex ante moral hazard. However, they restrict to two possible effort levels, and the government cannot influence the learning technology by public educational spending.

4In fact, the mobility of skilled households can be seen as (an extreme) form of skilled labor supply elasticity in their papers, but still the unskilled cannot react to, e.g., tax rate changes.

3 The Model

We consider an overlapping generations economy in which individuals of each generation live for two periods of time and die at the end of the second period. In the second period each individual gives birth to one child so that the population remains constant over time; each cohort is normalized to one adding up to a total population of two. In each period individuals are endowed with one divisible unit of time. At the beginning of the first period ex ante homogenous individuals invest into higher education and start working in the second period.⁵ Following Glomm and Ravikumar (1992), we assume that both education in the first period and working in the second period are time consuming activities which generate disutility. When entering the higher education system, let us name this universities for the rest of the paper, individuals have to decide on their time effort e ∈ [0,1]

devoted to learning, and consume the remaining time endowment,1−e, as first- period leisure. At the beginning of the second period individuals decide on their individual labor supply.

However, while entering the university neither a successful graduation nor an employment in the skilled labor sector afterwards is guaranteed. The reason is that the education system still acts as a filter, preventing some individuals from entering the skilled sector and therefore producing ex-post (income) inequality, see, e.g., Konrad (2004, p. 68f). This holds true even if the playing field is leveled, i.e., if there is equality of opportunities. Though individuals are identical with respect to (innate) ability, productivity, endowments, etc., and though they invest the same (learning) effort, some of them will fail, because there are differences in imponderable soft skills (e.g., behavior in job interviews, exam nerves) or due to an imperfect matching technology or bad hair days in final exams.

The probability pto pass the educational process and to acquire an employ- ment as skilled worker successfully, positively depends on the effort invested into education e, as higher educated people easier get higher paid jobs. Beside indi- vidual effort, the success probability also depends positively on the quality of the universities (e.g., student-teacher ratio), being measured in this paper by public funding E of the educational sector. In fact, public spending finances the over-

5Implicitly, we assume that individuals already attended compulsory schooling.

whelming part of expenditure on educational institutions, accounting in 2004 for 75.7% (84.0%) of overall expenditure in tertiary education on OECD (EU19) av- erage (OECD, 2007, Indicator B3 and Table B3.2b).

Therefore, we assume the probability function to be a concave function of both learning efforteand public fundingE, having both positive, but diminishing marginal productivities.⁶ Moreover, we assume that an increase in public funding (and consequently in the quality of the university) also increases the marginal productivity of each time unit invested.⁷

Accordingly, our human capital production function is given as probability function for entering the skilled sector

p=p(e, E)∈[0,1), (1)

where no private effort at all, e = 0, leads to remaining unskilled with certainty, consequently p(0, E) = 0. A successful graduation alters the qualitative nature of labor from unskilled to skilled labor. Each skilled worker is supplied with one unit of human capital.⁸

Formally recapitulating the discussion above, we assume the probability func- tion in equation (1) to have the following properties:

Assumption 1. The probability function for entering successfully the skilled sec-

6It might appear odd not to include private resource investment in the educational sector as determinant of the probability function into the model, because it accounts on average for 15 to 25 per cent of overall expenditure. However, including it makes the analysis very complicated on a technical level, whereas the main results should not change qualitatively as long as there is no perfect crowding-out in private and public investment. Therefore, we neglect these private spending, though this is a hard assumption.

7This assumption might be seen as analogon to complementarity between ability and edu- cational investment, the latter being used, e.g, in Maldonado (2008) and Jacobs and Bovenberg (2008), which both generalize the Siamese-Twins-model by Bovenberg and Jacobs (2005).

8The assumption that successful graduation provides each individual with one unit of human capital is made to simplify the model and to concentrate on educational risk. A different formula- tion of the human capital production function includes learning effort,e, and public resources,E as arguments:h=h(e, E)withhi>0,hii<0,i=e, E.

tor has the following properties:

∂p

∂e =p_e >0, ∂²p

∂e² =p_ee<0,

∂p

∂E =pE >0, ∂²p

∂E² =pEE <0,

∂²p

∂e∂E =p_eE >0,

This assumption and equation (1) fit to some stylized facts and capture both the risk of failing in graduation from universities and the risk of getting no em- ployment respectively only a low-paid job after graduation. The former risk fits into the category “input risk,” as defined by Levhari and Weiss (1974), whereas the latter one mirrors “output risk” in their terminology. Both kinds of educa- tional risk are highly of relevance: First, drop-out rates in tertiary education are, in 2005, on average around 30% both in the OECD and the EU19 (OECD, 2007, p. 63ff and Table A3.6). Second, focusing on unemployment risk, this is both on OECD-average and within the EU19 significant and even for graduates in tertiary education not negligible (OECD, 2007, Tables A8.2a and A8.4a).

Learning effort and the quality of education have a mitigating effect on the magnitude of this educational risk by affecting the success probability directly.

The former, as a matter of fact, decreases drop-out risk. The latter makes the

‘filter’ more penetrable and improves the learning technology. Higher educational attainment and a higher quality of education moreover have a tremendous effect on the output risk. The OECD (2007, p. 128f) regards upper-secondary education as the minimum level in order to be competitive in the labor market and to obtain a satisfactory position. In fact, employment rates increase sharply in educational attainment, whereas in the last 15 years unemployment risk of workers, having less than upper-secondary education, has been on average twice as large as for workers with a degree on the upper-secondary level and even triple as large as for graduates in tertiary education (OECD, 2007, Tables A8.2a to A8.4a).

Based on these stylized facts, we will interpret the success probability as qual- ity of education, and, for having a concise wording, improving quality of edu- cation here implies increasing the success probability forall individuals. This is another instrument for ex ante insurance (redistribution) beyond the concept of

‘equality of opportunity.’

Equality of opportunity implies that heterogenous individuals should not be hold responsible for circumstances, being out of their sphere of influence, but affecting their capability to earn income, i.e., innate ability to learn and socio- economic status, etc. Governmental intervention, e.g., by educational finance, should level the playing field for all individuals investing the same level of effort, see, e.g., Roemer (1998).

In a risky economy, quality of education delivers a further dimension, which has to the best of our knowledge been neglected so far. Improving quality of edu- cation in order to increase – forallindividuals – the likelihood of being skilled and receiving high incomes, serves as an additional ex ante insurance device against ex post income inequality, as outlined above.⁹ This general improvement can be achieved by increasing the quality of universities via better (public) funding. This opens another channel of influence besides ex post income transfers, by which the government can affect directly the magnitude of risk in the economy, now. Note, that this would even be the case, if we allow for private resource investment, as long as public and private funding are not perfect substitutes.

In our modeling, the emergence of risk is moreover determined endogenously by educational investment into learning effort. Hence, society rationally chooses both its exposure to risk and the probability distribution, it faces.

Comparing the modeling of (educational) risk in equation (1) and Assump- tion 1 to the modeling in most of the papers on (human capital) risk and publicly provided social insurance (e.g., Eaton and Rosen (1980b), Hamilton (1987), An- derberg and Andersson (2003)), building on the seminal model by Levhari and Weiss (1974), there are some important differences. In Levhari-Weiss-type mod- els risk is driven by an exogenous stochastic factor, whose effect on incomes is either enforced or mitigated by the level of education, a household acquires. This has two implications: First, the risk itself is exogenous, and households can only use either under- or over-investment in education as self-insurance device. Sec- ond, the government can provide social insurance by taxation, and it can affect self-insurance by households – either by implementing indirect subsidies via cap-

9For analyzing this dimension, it is, consequently, sufficient to focus on ex ante homogenous households, differing ex post due to idiosyncratic risk.

ital taxation (Hamilton, 1987) or by direct control of education (Anderberg and Andersson, 2003). However, the government can neither affect the risk itself, nor do education subsidies have a (stand-alone) insurance effect.

At the beginning of the second period, those individuals who successfully passed the graduation and application process start working as skilled workers, while those who fail enter the labor market as unskilled workers. Assuming com- petitive labor markets, we are not able to deal directly with unemployment risk, being discussed in the stylized facts. However, an increasing wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers in perfect labor markets and increasing unemploy- ment among unskilled ones in labor markets with some rigidities are driven by the same fundamental economic factors (see Krugman (1995), Katz and Autor (1999)). Thus, our model applying a skill premium in wages in competitive mar- kets can be seen as suitable approximation.

In the second period households are endowed with one divisible unit of time, which is divided between second-period leisure and labor supply.¹⁰ Total wage income is spent on total family consumption. Following the major line of the lit- erature, we assume that private insurance against educational risk is not available.

This might be because of market failure due to moral hazard (Eaton and Rosen, 1980b), to adverse selection or to the fact that individuals are too young to write insurance contracts, when they decide on their human capital investment (Sinn, 1996).¹¹

All individuals have identical preferences which are defined over leisure in period one and two,l₁andl₂, and over total family consumptionCin period two.

Thereby, family consumption includes (good) consumption by the child. For- mally, the preferences are described by a von Neumann-Morgenstern expected utility function which is additively separable in its intertemporal components.

10Because individuals decide about their working time in the second period, a different formu- lation for the human capital production function will not change our qualitative results. This is because the amount of human capital, an individual possesses, differs from the amount offered on the labor market. Including a human capital production function as described in footnote 8 just means that we have two sources to influence the supplied amount of human capital which work in the same direction.

11See, e.g., Andersson and Konrad (2003a) for an opposing view and some discussion of this assumption.

Thus, we have

E[U] =U₁(1−e) +p(e, E)·U₂(C_H,1−H) + [1−p(e, E)]·U₂(C_L,1−L), (2) where H = 1 − l_2H denotes labor supplied by a skilled worker in the second period, and L = 1− l_2L denotes labor supplied by an unskilled worker in the second period.¹² In order to ensure an interior solution, especially for learning effort e = 1−l₁, we assume that the utility function meets the following Inada conditions:

Assumption 2. First and second period utility exhibits the following properties:

∂Ui

∂l_i , ∂U2

∂C >0, ∂²Ui

∂l_i² ,∂²U2

∂C² <0 i= 1,2

llimi→0

∂U_i

∂l_i = lim

C→0

∂U₂

∂C → ∞, lim

li→1

∂U_i

∂l_i = lim

C→∞

∂U₂

∂C = 0 i= 1,2.

Wages for both skill groups are exogenously given and denoted byw_H and w_Lrespectively and the skill premium in wages equalsw_H −w_L >0. Assuming exogenous wages can be justified by focusing on a small open economy with two sectors. Financing public expenditure depends on the information available to the government: it can always use a standard linear income tax scheme consisting of a constant tax ratetand a lump-sum transferT. We do not restrict this lump-sum transfer to be positive. If T < 0, the transfer turns into a lump-sum tax. T < 0 can then be interpreted as general (deferred) tuition fees, which have to be paid by all households after finishing university. If the government possesses information on the skill status of a worker and can observe in which sector it is working, the government can moreover raise a skill-specific taxf_B. This tax is a fixed amount of money which has to be paid by households, who successfully entered the skilled sector. Though this tax instrument largely corresponds to a graduate (income) tax (see Jacobs (2002, Section 2) for some definitions) as, e.g., the Australian HECS- system, there is one important difference: the skill-specific tax f_B here is not proportional to income. The skill-specific tax can be interpreted as first period tuition fees, which are pre-financed by the government via a compulsory public

12SubscriptsH andLdenote the respective values for the different skill groups.

credit. Thus, there are no real payments in the first period of life. In the second period, the duty to repay the public credit depends on successfully entering the skilled sector and the repayment is independent of actual labor supply. Finally, only skilled workers will pay the tax f_B and we will call this instrument ‘skill- specific tuition fees.’

The budget constraint of a skilled household can then be written as

C_H = (1−t)·w_H ·H−f_B+T, (3) whereas consumption of an unskilled household is given by

C_L = (1−t)·w_L·L+T. (4) The educational risk is assumed to be idiosyncratic, hence, there are ex post p(e, E) skilled workers and1−p(e, E) unskilled ones in each generation. The government uses its instruments in order to maximize the utility of a representative steady-state generation. Consequently, the government faces a trade-off between efficient financing of public expenditure and optimal redistribution between suc- cessful and unsuccessful students as well as optimal insurance against the risk of education.

In a nutshell, the timing structure and the model can be summarized as follows:

First, the benevolent government decides on public funding of the educational sector and on the tax instruments.¹³ Second, the young generation will choose learning effort given the wages and the governmental decisions. This in turn de- termines the success probability p(e, E), and with it the fraction of skilled and unskilled workers. At the beginning of the second period each individual knows whether it graduated into the skilled sector or failed and will then decide on its labor supply. In the following, we will solve the model by backward induction.

13We thereby assume that the government can credibly commit to its chosen tax instruments, and we do not consider any hold-up and time-consistency problem. Moreover, we do not focus on extortionary Leviathan governments. See Andersson and Konrad (2003b) for these issues in a related context.

4 Household Behavior

The complete decision problem of a representative household can be described by the following maximization problem:

{e,H,CmaxH,L,CL}E[U] = U1(1−e) +p(e, E)·U2(CH,1−H)

+ [1−p(e, E)]·U₂(C_L,1−L) s.t. (3) and (4) (5) Substitution of (3) and (4) forC_H andC_Lin (5) yields the following first order conditions:

∂E[U]

∂H = U_2C(C_H,1−H)·(1−t)w_H −U_2l2(C_H,1−H) = 0, (6)

∂E[U]

∂L = U_2C(C_L,1−L)·(1−t)w_L−U_2l2(C_L,1−L) = 0, (7)

∂E[U]

∂e = −U1l1(1−e) +pe·[U2(CH,1−H)−U2(CL,1−L)] = 0. (8) The system of first order conditions (6) to (8) is block recursive such that op- timal labor supply H^∗, L^∗ and with it optimal consumption C_H^∗, C_L^∗ are sepa- rately defined by (6) and (7) respective.¹⁴ Note that optimal consumption and labor supply of the respective skill group are conditional on the policy mix used by the government (t, T) as well as on the respective wage ratew_H, w_L. Addi- tionally, skill-specific tuition feesf_B are only relevant for labor supply and con- sumption of skilled workers. Inserting optimal labor supply and consumption into the second period utility function gives the indirect utility function for both types of workers: V^H = U₂(C_H^∗,1−H^∗), V^L = U₂(C_L^∗,1−L^∗). Using the re- spective indirect utility functions V^H and V^L in (8) results in the optimal effort e^∗ =e(t, T, f_B, E, w_H, w_L). Evaluating first period utility at the optimal efforte^∗ results in the first period indirect utility functionV =U1(1−e^∗).

It is straightforward to show that the second order conditions SOC(i) <

0, i = H, L, e are fulfilled under standard assumptions and the fact that a skilled worker must have higher utility in the second period than an unskilled

14Throughout the paper, asterisks denote optimal values. To simplify the notation, we drop the functional argumentst, T, fB, wH, wL,when this causes no confusion.

one,V^H > V^L, because else there will be no learning effort at all.

In the next sections we derive the optimal policy mix. For that reason, we need to derive the comparative statics of the individual choice variables with respect to the different instruments. We start by calculating the comparative statics of the labor supply of both skill groups:

∂H^∗

∂t = −−U2CC(1−t)w_H² + (U2Cl2 −U2C)·wH

SOC(H) ≶0,

∂H^∗

∂T = −∂H^∗

∂f_B =−U_2CC(1−t)w_H −U_2Cl2 SOC(H) <0,

∂L^∗

∂t = −−U_2CC(1−t)w_L² + (U_2Cl2 −U_2C)·w_L

SOC(L) ≶0,

∂L^∗

∂T = −U_2CC(1−t)w_L−U_2Cl2 SOC(L) <0,

where we have assumed that leisure is a normal good. Assuming the substitution effect to dominate, we avoid backward bending labor supply, thus ^∂H_∂t,^∂L_∂t <0.

By the very same analysis we receive comparative static results for learning efforte^∗ with respect to the lump-sum transferT:

∂e^∗

∂T = −pe·¡

α^H −α^L¢

SOC(e) <0, (9)

with α^j = ^∂V_∂C^j > 0, j = H, L denoting the marginal utility of income. The inequality in equation (9) stems from the fact that we assume agent monotonicity (Mirrlees, 1976) to hold. This implies that a skilled worker always commands a higher income than an unskilled worker, and hence α^H < α^L. The intuition is straightforward: any increase in lump-sum income T decreases the learning intensitye, because an educational degree becomes marginally less attractive.

An increase in skill-specific fees changes learning effort according to

∂e^∗

∂f_B = p_e·α^H

SOC(e) <0, (10)

while increased public spending in educationE changes the effort according to

∂e^∗

∂E = −p_eE ·¡

V^H −V^L¢

SOC(e) >0. (11)

Learning effort is unambiguously reduced if the skill-specific tuition fees rise be- cause this directly reduces the return to education and creates a negative substi- tution effect, whilst increased spending in education increases the productivity of learning,peE >0, and therefore learning effort.

Contrary to these effects, the effect of an increase in the wage taxtis less clear.

Increasingceteris paribusthe tax burden on skilled wage income, decreases learn- ing effort, because the returns to schooling decrease. Increasing ceteris paribus the wage tax for unskilled workers increases the returns to schooling, and in- creases the learning intensity. Combining both effects, we end up with

∂e^∗

∂t = −p_e£

α^L·w_LL^∗−α^H ·w_HH^∗¤

SOC(e) ≷0. (12)

If labor supply of skilled workers is not significantly higher than labor supply of unskilled ones, and given the single crossing property, an increase in the tax rate increases the learning intensity, becauseα^L·wLL^∗ > α^H ·wHH^∗. The intuition is twofold: First, our assumptions imply that taxation of unskilled outweighs tax- ation of skilled, and second, a higher tax rate decreases the income risk of time investment in education by providing an insurance effect via decreasing the vari- ance in after-tax incomes.

We summarize that skill-specific tuition fees only have an income effect on skilled labor supply, but strongly distort learning effort. Wage taxation, instead, distorts skilled and unskilled labor supply, but affects learning effort only mod- estly.

Evaluating the expected utility function in (5) at the optimal labor supplies, H^∗, L^∗, and the optimal learning effort, e^∗, the indirect expected utility function of the household can be written as

E[V^∗(t, T, f_B, E)] =V(t, T, f_B, E)+p(e^∗, E)·V^H(t, T, f_B)+[1−p(e^∗, E)]·V^L(t, T).

(13)

It is important to note that E[V^∗] is a function of the policy mix chosen by the government. This policy mix is exogenously given for the households. By using the envelope-theorem we can derive the marginal impact of a policy change on the expected utility of household, which will be useful later on:

∂E[V^∗]

∂f_B = −p^∗·α^H <0, (14)

∂E[V^∗]

∂T = p^∗·α^H + (1−p^∗)·α^L>0 (15)

∂E[V^∗]

∂t = −p^∗·α^H ·[w_HH^∗−f_B]−(1−p^∗)·α^L·w_LL^∗ <0 (16)

∂E[V^∗]

∂E = p^∗_E ·£

V^H −V^L¤

>0. (17)

5 First-best as Benchmark

Before we analyze the optimal public policy in a Second-best setting, as described in section 3, we establish the First-best solution as a benchmark. This allows later on to examine potential shifts in optimal insuring strategies and to answer the question, in which cases income insurance respectively increasing quality of education has more importance.

The First-best allocation can be characterized by

e,E,CmaxH,H,CL,LU₁(1−e) +p(e, E)·V^H(C_H,1−H) + [1−p(e, E)]·V^L(C_L,1−L) (18) subject to the resource constraint

E+p(e, E)·C_H+ [1−p(e, E)]·C_L=p(e, E)·w_HH+ [1−p(e, E)]·w_LL. (19) Note that in a First-best the government not only chooses consumption C_j and labor supplyZ_j,Z_j, j =H, L, for skilled and unskilled households, but also fully controls learning efforteand real educational investmentE.

The first order conditions are

∂L

∂e = −U_1l1(1−e) +p_e·£

V^H −V^L¤

(20) +λ·pe·[(wHH−CH)−(wLL−CL)] = 0,

∂L

∂E = pE·[V^H −V^L] (21)

+λ·p_E·

·

(w_HH−C_H)−(w_LL−C_L)− 1 p_E

¸

= 0,

∂L

∂C_H = p(e, E)·(α^H −λ) = 0, (22)

∂L

∂H = p(e, E)·(λw_H −U_2l^H₂) = 0, (23)

∂L

∂C_L = [1−p(e, E)]·(α^L−λ) = 0, (24)

∂L

∂L = [1−p(e, E)]·(λwL−U_2l^L₂) = 0, (25) where λ represents the Lagrangian multiplier and, according to section 4, α^j equals marginal utility of income in the respective skill groupsj =H, L.

From equations (22) and (24) follows that

α^H =λ=α^L =α, (26)

thus all households have the same marginal utility of income. Combining next (23) and (25) results in

U_2l^H₂

U_2l^L₂ = w_H wL

>1, (27)

implyingU_2l^H₂ > U_2l^L₂. Skilled households have a higher marginal utility of leisure in the second period and, therefore, work more than the unskilled,H^{F B} > L^{F B}.¹⁵ This appears reasonable from an efficiency point of view, because the skilled are more productive. These results then suggest on the one hand that the govern- ment provides full income insurance, in sense of equalized marginal utilities of consumption/income, but on the other hand that the skill premium, measured in utility, V^H −V^L turns negative. These are the most important differences to a

15Throughout the paper, the superscript F B will characterize the value of a variable in the First-best solution.

laissez-faire economy or to a Second-best solution, and they are driven by the fact, that the social planer (the government) can control learning effort perfectly in a First-best approach. If there is moral hazard in learning, a positive skill pre- mium in utility is absolutely necessary in order to induce learning effort – else there would not be any skilled worker in the economy, becausep(0, E) = 0.

In the special case of an additively separable second period utility function, all these results become crystal clear, because then they imply unquestionable C_H^{F B} = C_L^{F B} = C^{F B}, but H^{F B} > L^{F B} and, consequently, First-best optimal leisure1−H^{F B} <1−L^{F B}. Therefore, we end up withV^H −V^L < 0, giving the unskilled the higher second period (and overall) utility.

Note also that all these conditions are independent of learning effort and the quality of the educational system, thus they must hold irrespectively of the level ofE.

Given the results for optimal consumption and labor supply in the second pe- riod, First-best efficient learning effort then balances marginal disutility of for- gone first-period leisure (U1l1) and the second-period welfare loss by an increased number of skilled households (due toV^H −V^L < 0) on the one hand and gains in tax revenue by an increased number of skilled households on the other hand.

Hereby, we interpretT_j = (w_jZ_j −C_j), Z_j, j =H, L, as lump-sum tax payment of a household of skill group j. As the first line in equation (20) is negative and λ =α >0as well asp_e >0, the squared bracket in the second line of (20) has to be positive. Accordingly, a First-best optimum impliesT_H > T_L.

Optimal public spendingE on the quality of the educational sector is deter- mined by a similar trade-off between welfare gains: public spending itself is costly and an increased success probability (pE >0) and therefore an increased number of skilled households decrease ceteris paribus welfare, because V^H −V^L < 0.

However, an increase in skilled workers also increases the resources available for redistribution.

By applying the resource constraint (19) andT_H > T_L, we can derive

T_H > E^{F B} > T_L. (28) Hence, there will be direct cash transfers from the skilled to the unskilled in case

the tax revenue from skilled workers is large and educational investment is suffi- ciently low, i.e.,p^∗·T_H > E^{F B}.

Moreover, from rearranging (21), we obtain the First-best investment in public education as

E^{F B} =p^{F B} ·²pE·V^H −V^L

α +p^{F B} ·²pE·[TH −TL], (29) where ²pE is the elasticity of the probability function p(e, E) with respect to a variation of E. E^{F B} is decreasing in the negative skill premium V^H −V^L, but increasing in the additional resources available for redistributionT_H −T_L.¹⁶

We conclude:

Proposition 1. In a First-best solution, the government provides in any case full insurance in income by ensuring equalized marginal utility of income respectively consumption across skill types. If optimal educational investment is relatively low (E < p^{F B} ·T_H), there are direct resource (income) transfers from the skilled to the unskilled households (T_L <0).

In a nutshell, income insurance is of major importance relative to increasing quality of education, measured by an increase in the success probabilityp(e, E).

In the following section, we will now characterize Second-best efficient policies and then compare the results to the First-best benchmark.

6 Public Policy in a Second-best World

The benevolent government again aims to maximize social welfare. Therefore, it can influence the quality of the education system by choosing public spending in educationE, and it can grant a lump-sum transferT, but it can no longer control private learning effort directly. If the government has full information about the skill and employment status of a worker, overall expenditure E+T must be fi- nanced by skill-specific tuition feesf_B, and by a proportional wage tax at ratet.

16In principle there can be a corner solutionE^{F B}= 0, where the government would like to have a negative resource investment into education, if either the negative utility premiumV^H−V^Lis too large or the positive gain in tax revenueTH−TLis too small. We are going, however, to focus on interior solutions, whereE^{F B} ≥0is optimal.

Otherwise the government can only rely on the wage tax (see Subsection 6.1). We should stress again that the educational risk is idiosyncratic, and therefore there is no aggregate risk. From the government’s perspective, there arep(e^∗, E)skilled workers supplyingp^∗·H^∗ efficiency units of skilled labor and[1−p(e^∗, E)]un- skilled workers supplying(1−p^∗)·L^∗efficiency units of unskilled labor.

Thus, the governmental budget constraint can be written as

E+T =p^∗·[tw_HH^∗+f_B] + (1−p^∗)·tw_LL^∗. (30) UsingE, the government can directly influence the percentage of skilled workers.

Using the tax instruments, it can redistribute income between skilled and unskilled households, which affects indirectly the shares of skilled and unskilled workers via incentives for learning effort. Both skill-specific tuition fees and the wage taxtprovide another partial insurance against income fluctuations, and therefore against the educational risk.

The questions we seek to answer now are: (i) Does, in a Second-best world, income insurance still matter more than improving quality of education? (ii) Does this result depend on the informational assumptions and the (non-)availability of skill-specific taxes? (iii) What is the optimal combination of wage taxes, lump- sum elements and (deferred) skill-specific tuition fees in such an environment?

Formally, the problem can be written as:

{E,fmaxB,t,T}E[V^∗(E, f_B, t, T)] s.t.[tw_HH^∗+f_B]p+t·w_LL^∗(1−p) = E+T (31) Note that the government anticipates the reaction of households while making its choice of the policy mix. Forming the Lagrangian L, introducing the Lagrange multiplierλ, and relying on the Envelope effects (14) to (17), first order conditions

read as follows:

∂L

∂fB

= −p^∗α^H +λ µ

p^∗+p^∗tw_H∂H^∗

∂fB

¶

+ λ[tw_HH^∗+f_B−tw_LL^∗]p^∗_e∂e^∗

∂f_B = 0 (32)

∂L

∂T = p^∗α^H + (1−p^∗)α^L+λ µ

t

·

p^∗wH∂H^∗

∂T + (1−p^∗)wL∂L^∗

∂T

¸

−1

¶

+ λ[tw_HH^∗+f_B−tw_LL^∗]p^∗_e∂e^∗

∂T = 0 (33)

∂L

∂t = −p^∗α^H ·w_HH^∗−(1−p^∗)α^Lw_LL^∗+λ·p^∗tw_H∂H^∗

∂t + λ

µ

(1−p^∗)tw_L∂L^∗

∂t + [tw_HH^∗+f_B−tw_LL^∗]p^∗_e∂e^∗

∂t

¶

+ λ(p^∗ ·w_HH^∗+ [1−p^∗]·w_LL^∗) = 0 (34)

∂L

∂E = p^∗_E£

V^H −V^L¤ + λ

µ

[tw_HH^∗+f_B−tw_LL^∗]

· p^∗_e∂e^∗

∂E +p^∗_E

¸

−1

¶

= 0 (35)

In subsection 6.1, we are first going to derive the optimal tax and education policy, if skill-specific tuition fees are not available. In subsection 6.2, we then broaden the analysis to the full set of instruments and show that the importance of quality of education is even more strengthened, in case the government has information available on the skill/employment type.

6.1 Optimal Tax Policy Without Skill-specific Taxes

In this case, the government has limited information, cannot implement skill- specific tuition fees and has to rely on a linear income tax. FOC (32) is to be canceled and the parameterf_B is equal to zero throughout equations (33) to (35).

Then, let us define the net social marginal value of income (including the income effects on the tax base) of a household of typej as

b^j = α^j

λ +t·w_j·Z_j^∗·∂Z_j

∂T +t·(w_H ·H^∗−w_L·L^∗)·p_e· ∂e

∂T, j =H, L, (36) where Z_j = H, Lforj = H, L. The second summand on the RHS of equation

(36) represents the loss in tax revenue due to an income-effect induced decrease in labor supply and the third summand incorporates the revenue effect from taxing the skill premium, when the household adjusts its learning effort and therefore its probability of getting employed as a skilled worker.

Theexpectednet social marginal value of income is given from (36) by

¯b = p^∗·α^H + (1−p^∗)·α^L

λ +p^∗·t·w_H ·H^∗· ∂H

∂T (37)

+(1−p^∗)·t·w_L·L^∗· ∂L

∂T +t·(w_H ·H^∗−w_L·L^∗)·p_e· ∂e

∂T. Slightly rearranging FOC (33) and inserting the definition of¯b from equation (37), it is straightforward to show that for the expected net social marginal value of income it must be

¯b = 1. (38)

Next, we define the insurance characteristic as the negatively normalized co- variance of net social marginal value of incomeb^jand labor incomew_j·Z_j, being analogous to Feldstein’s distributional characteristic and measuring society’s con- cern of avoiding risk. Hence, the insurance effect is given by:

χ=− Cov(b^j, w_j ·Z_j)

¯b·(p^∗·w_H ·H^∗+ (1−p^∗)·w_L·L^∗) >0, (39) being positive, because the social net marginal value of income is decreasing in income.

Moreover, we define

²_HH = p^∗·w_H ·H^∗

p^∗·wH ·H^∗+ (1−p^∗)·wL·L^∗ · (1−t)w_H

H^∗ ·S_HH >0, (40)

²LL = (1−p^∗)·wL·L^∗

p^∗·w_H ·H^∗+ (1−p^∗)·w_L·L^∗ · (1−t)wL

L^∗ ·SLL >0, (41) as weighted compensated elasticities of labor supply with respect to its net wage, whereS_jj > 0represents the substitution effect in labor supplyZ_j. The weights are the share of skilled respectively unskilled labor income in aggregate labor income.