Higher education funding, welfare and inequality in equilibrium
用连续时间异质主体模型分析了五种高等教育资助方案对福利和不平等的影响，发现教育成本低时差异可忽略，成本高时补贴优于贷款，但转型成本可能使现状合理，而全额补贴加毕业生税则能带来显著福利改善。
This paper analyses quantitatively the effect that higher education funding policies have on welfare and inequality. We evaluate five different higher education financing schemes with a heterogeneous agent model in continuous time. When educational costs are small, differences in outcomes across systems are negligible. As the cost of education and the share of debtors in society rises, it becomes preferable to fund education with subsidies, instead of student loans, as there is a pecuniary externality that arises with debt. Although subsidies can generate large steady state welfare gains, transition costs can be large enough to justify the status quo. The exception, full subsidy with graduate taxes, yields substantial welfare gains, even when taking into account transitional dynamics.