In a series of recent papers, education economists such as Charles Manski (1992), Dennis Epple and Richard Romano (1998a, 1998b) and Thomas Nechyba (1999) have emphasized the presence of one particular educational spillover in the use of school vouchers – the “peer group” problem. This is...

In this paper we argue that policy in relation to education has relied too extensively on the more easily measured costs of production to support a common conclusion of economies of scale in school and/or district size. We argue that there are external costs that increase with size but that can...

Part of Introduction: The question whether society can readily substitute public action for private initiative with respect to public goods is still very much open. Bergstrom, Blume and Varian (1986, hereafter BBV) and Andreoni (1993) challenge the proposition that government provision "crowds...

Under the majority voting rule, a system of universally available vouchers (UV) is politically less feasible than a system of selective vouchers (SV) confined to families with incomes equal to or less than median voter income. After the introduction of UV, public expenditure on education will...

This paper is designed to acquaint the reader with the historical background of the concept of property rights and several surrounding controversies by reviewing early work on property by economists and philosophers (with the main emphasis on the former). The survey focuses on significant...