Globalization, Redistribution, and the Composition of Public Education Expenditures

We analyze whether globalization affects the composition of public expenditures for education by integrating arguments from the Heckscher-Ohlin and the tax competition literature into a common theoretical framework. The model suggests that with increasing global integration, developing countries have strong incentives to shift public education expenditures towards lower education. In industrialized countries, on the other hand, globalization has an ambiguous effect on the composition of public education expenditures. We test and confirm these hypotheses with data on 86 countries over the 1999-2006 period.