Why Invest in Your Neighbor? Social Contract on Educational Investment

It may be in the interestof low-ability individuals to subsidize the education of high-abilityindividuals. The sufficient conditions are surprisingly mild:positive externalities in education and complementarity in productionbetween human capital and labor supplied by the low-ability individuals.However, tax competition and the free mobility of the educatedgive rise to time-inconsistency and free-riding problems whichrender such a social contract infeasible and result in a suboptimallylow investment in education. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2000