Working Papers

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https://unbscholar.lib.unb.ca/handle/1882/12775
Working or discussion papers circulated publicly or among a group of peers. Certain disciplines, for example, economics, issue working papers in series. (URI: http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_8042)

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Browsing Working Papers by Author "Benos, Nikos"

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    Education Policies and Economic Growth
    Benos, Nikos
    This paper studies the general equilibrium implications of various types of education policy. In particular, we examine individual-specific vouchers (ISV), individual-specific transfers (1ST) and public investment on economy-wide human capital (GH). Individual-specific vouchers augment inherited private education spending, while individual-specific transfers are standard cash transfers, which increase private income. Public investment on economy-wide human capital provides economy-wide externalities to individual human capital accumulation. The context is an overlapping generations growth model with second-best policy. In particular, the government chooses its tax policy and the allocation of tax revenues among the three types of education policy, subject to the competitive decentralized equilibrium. Numerical simulations show that it is socially optimal to provide a large voucher on inherited individual education expenditures and spend heavily on economy-wide human capital accumulation. In addition, it is optimal to finance government spending by a low proportional tax on initial human capital and a high lump-sum tax.
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    Public Education and Economic Growth Under Progressive Taxation
    Benos, Nikos
    This paper studies the general equilibrium implications of alternative tax systems. In doing so, it extends the work of Glomm-Ravikumar (1992). In particular, we study two systems called proportional taxation (PP) and progressive taxation (PG). Under both systems, the economy-wide human capital stock generates positive externalities for each individual. In addition, there is active social education policy in the form of tax-transfers that can augment the economy-wide human capital stock and policy is chosen by a centralized fiscal authority. The basic result is that multiple equilibrium tax vectors exist under progressive taxation, while this is not true under proportional taxation. Also, numerical simulations show that a system characterized by high progressive and low proportional taxes is welfare superior to one of high proportional and low progressive taxation. This is even if tax-transfers are distorting.