Government Spending on Education and Labour Mobility

This paper sets up a simple two-country overlapping generations madel to explore the interplay between education, taxation, and labour mobility and to assess the impact of education policies on human capital formation and long-run welfare in both the sending and the receiving country. It emphasises the role of diminishing returns with respect to public spending on education in the welfare consequences of labour mobility. Emigration can improve the long-run welfare of the sending country when the elasticity of the education technology is low. Immigration augments the long-run level of human capital in the receiving country but can resuit in a level of long-run welfare lower than autarky.