سیستم های آموزشی، رشد و توزیع درآمد: یک مطالعه کیفی

This study sets out to develop a dynamic model within an economy characterized by the coexistence of public and private schools, under imperfect credit market conditions, in an attempt to provide a clearer understanding of the evolution of economic growth and income inequality. We find that any government wishing to reduce income inequality should adopt policies aimed at increasing the enrollment rate in public schools. However, whilst high enrollment rates can be sustained in private schools, and thus create enhanced economic growth, this can only occur if accompanied by the liberalization of the credit markets.

Despite human capital being widely regarded as an extremely important determinant of economic growth, rather surprisingly, few studies within the literature have attempted to examine the structure of the educational system within an economy.1 This study develops a dynamic model within an economy characterized by the coexistence of public and private schools, under imperfect credit market conditions, in an attempt to provide a clearer understanding of the evolution of economic growth and income inequality. In order to effectively study the impacts of educational policies on economic performance, a requirement of our model of coexisting public and private schools, is that students are allowed to switch; therefore, a prerequisite of all the countries selected for inclusion in this study is that they must be providers of both public and private schools. Details of private school enrollments, as a proportion of total secondary school enrollments, for the year 1985, are presented in Table 1 in respect of a wide range of high income (OECD and non-OECD) countries.

This study develops a dynamic model within which households are allowed to make choices between public and private schools. Household decisions on education will determine the structure of the educational system, and our simulation results indicate that the structure of the educational system is important in explaining the relationship between growth and inequality. We also analyze the impacts of alternative fiscal policies which the government can use to affect the structure of the educational system. An increase in the tax rate will increase public school spending per student and the rate of public school enrollment. Following such a policy will result in increasing the growth rate and utility, and will also lead to a reduction in income inequality. Alternatively, a government can provide public support for private education through the adoption of voucher programs. However, whilst increasing the scale of vouchers will undoubtedly lead to an increase in both the growth rate and inequality, it will not necessarily lead to any improvement in welfare for young agents. In order to study the influence of financial development on economic growth, we go on to introduce imperfect credit market conditions into the model later in the paper, and find that the existence of imperfect credit markets precludes some agents from choosing private schools, whilst financial liberalization without any other interventions will increase both the growth rate and inequality. If any government intends to use financial reforms as a means of helping the poor, it would also need to apply an additional policy aimed at increasing the size of the public sector (e.g., increasing public school spending per student or reducing the amounts of vouchers). Our results therefore provide a cautionary note to those developing countries currently engaging in financial reforms.