This paper explores the impact of university funding reform on teaching quality competition. It shows that a graduate tax with differentiated, but state-regulated fees maximises the higher education surplus, whereas student grants as well as pure and income contingent loans do not. Fee autonomy...

This paper investigates how the abolishment of a ban on tuition fees affects the quality of higher education with centralized and decentralized decision making. It is shown that tuition fees fully crowd public funds under centralization and quality of university education does not improve....

Several Bundesländer in Germany have or are about to introduce tuition fees for higher education. We discuss three hypotheses pertaining to (i) their distributional effects, (ii) their effect on the demand for higher education and study behavior, and (iii) the competition and financial...