A half a century has passed since the landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education (1954) overturned the doctrine of separate but equal in the realm of public education. This chapter attempts to summarize what we know about the impact of Brown on enrollment patterns and academic and economic...

This chapter examines the literature that attempts to measure the relationship between labor earnings and the average quality of a state's elementary and secondary schools where school quality is approximated by statewide average characteristics like the teacher-pupil ratio. We present evidence...

This chapter analyzes the international evidence on the relationship between educational wage premia and the distribution of personal labor earnings. The aim is to review what is known about the contribution of differences in relative wages across schooling levels to the degree of variability,...

It is well known that higher education financing involves uncertainty and risk with respect to students' future economic fortunes, and an unwillingness of banks to provide loans because of the absence of collateral. It follows that without government intervention there will be both socially...

This chapter provides an overview of the nature of state and federal subsidies to higher education and the empirical evidence on the impacts on students' college enrollment decisions. The discussion includes a brief discussion of the incentives created by federal and state subsidies for...

The majority of children in the US and many other high-income nations are now cared for many hours per week by people who are neither their parents nor their school teachers. The role of such pre-school and out-of-school care is potentially two-fold: First, child care makes it feasible for both...

This paper explores for economists how the school-finance litigation movement, which began with Serrano v. Priest in 1971, ought to be characterized in economic models. Its primary message is that this has become a national movement, not one confined to individual states. Economists should be...