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Estimating The Cost Of An Adequate Education, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

The Effect Of Income Taxation On Consumption And Labor Supply, James P. Ziliak, Thomas J. Kniesner

Center for Policy Research

We estimate the incentive effects of income taxation in a life-cycle model of consumption and labor supply that relaxes the standard assumption of strong separability within periods. Our model permits identification of both within-period preference parameters and lifecycle preference parameters such as the inter-temporal substitution elasticity. Results indicate that consumption and hours worked are direct complements in utility, and both increase with an increase in the after-tax share and with a compensated increase in the net wage. The compensated net wage elasticity is about 0.3, nearly double the standard estimates for men in the United States that ignore within-period non-separability …

The Cfe Case, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars.

Sozialpolitik Anders Denken. Das Verursacherprinzip – Von Der Umweltpolitischen Zur Sozialpolitischen Anwendung, Isidor Wallimann, Esteban Piñeiro

Books

The “polluter pays” principle in environmental law assumes that the actor would reduce or avoid adverse effects of his actions if he had to bear the consequences of those actions (internalization of effects). Such internalization can generally be done in two ways: either by avoiding or eliminating the harmful effects or by wearing the financial consequences of the injury. It is therefore on the one hand to have an incentive effect, on the other to a compensatory effect.

Pineiro and Wallimann apply these societal cost principles from the environmental world to the social realm, where social problems can be seen …

How Much More Does A Disadvantaged Student Cost?, William D. Duncombe, John Yinger

Center for Policy Research

This paper provides a guide to statistically based methods for estimating the extra costs of educating disadvantaged students, shows how these methods are related, and compares state aid programs that account for these costs in different ways. We show how pupil weights, which are included in many state programs, can be estimated from an education cost equation, which many scholars use to obtain an education cost index, and we devise a method to estimate pupil weights directly. Using data from New York, we show that the distribution of state aid is similar with statistically based pupil weights and an educational …

School Finance, Equivalent Educational Expenditure, And Income Distribution: Equal Dollars Or Equal Chances For Success?, Kathryn Wilson, Kristina T. Lambright, Timothy M. Smeeding

Center for Policy Research

This paper breaks new ground in the debate on school finance and equality of per pupil school expenditures. We are able to allocate expenditures per pupil at the *individual* student and family income level. This allows us to examine both student and school district characteristics and to assess several measures of equality of expenditure across the income distribution of parents and by funding sources. We find a surprising degree of equality in the actual amounts expended per child in low- vs. high-income families. But adjusting for student needs to reach equivalent education expenditures results in much greater inequality over the …

Are The Benefits Of Medicine Worth What We Pay For It?, David M. Cutler

Center for Policy Research

Is medical care worth it? Conventional wisdom says no, but my answer is emphatically yes. The benefits that we have received from medical advance are enormously greater than the costs. I suggest that public policy far outweighs the importance of cost containment relative to coverage expansion; we could in fact spend more and get a lot more for our health care dollars. In what follows, I talk about the costs and benefits of medical advance, focusing on two areas where I have done the most work: improvements in cardiovascular disease care and care for low birth weight infants. In each …

Welfare State Expenditures And The Distribution Of Child Opportunities, Irwin Garfinkel, Lee Rainwater, Timothy M. Smeeding

Center for Policy Research

This paper estimates the redistributive effects of welfare state expenditures on social and economic disparities in the economic well-being of citizens in ten nations. Data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and other sources for cash and non-cash social welfare benefits (health and education benefits from third parties) are used to describe differences in the size and nature of welfare states and their distributional effects. The OECD data are combined with micro data on household incomes from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) both to estimate the redistributive effects of the expenditures and taxes and to construct measures …