This paper shows that the design of education policy involves a potential conflict between welfare and social mobility. We consider a setting in which social mobility is maximized under the least elitist public education system, whereas welfare maximization calls for the most elitist system. We...

This paper studies the long-run macroeconomic, distributional and welfare effects of tuition policy and student loans. We therefore form a rich model of risky human capital investment based on the seminal work of Heckman, Lochner and Taber (1998). We extend their original model by variable labor...

We assess the merits of different education systems in a framework that accounts for the joint decision problem of parents regarding fertility and education. Specifically, we compare the implications of a public and a private schooling regime for economic growth and inequality. We find that...