Should Education be Taxed when Agents are Altruistic?.

We consider an overlapping generations model to study the effect of the educational system on growth and on the optimal educational policies when individuals are altruistic. The teaching efficiency depends on the teacher to pupil ratio; given a number of teachers, the number of students has a negative effect on the accumulation of human capital. This negative, intragenerational externality consists in a congestion effect of the educational system which may lead to overeducation. The model also assumes the existence of an intergenerational, positive externality which depends both on average human capital and on familial human capital.