Abstract
Our model captures the fact that Russia has both much human capital and an education system that produces the wrong skills for a market economy. We define a rule for the timing of educational restructuring that is Pareto optimal and that dominates all later times in a Paretian sense while simultaneously reducing inequality. We demonstrate that failure to implement restructuring early in the transition process is likely to produce a very long delay that will significantly reduce Russia's human capital. A retreat from subsidizing public education is Likely to be counterproductive, We argue that early educational restructuring should be emphasized in Russia's transition strategy.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 618-643 |
| Number of pages | 26 |
| Journal | Journal of Comparative Economics |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Dec 1999 |
Bibliographical note
We thank two anonymous referees, Graziella Bertocchi, George Bindon, Joe Brada, John Bonin, Rachel Friedberg, Oded Galor, Stephen Heyneman, Yaakov Khazanov, Peter Murrell, Arlene Overland, Gil Skillman, Judy Thornton, Dani Tsiddon, David Weil, and seminar participants at Brown University, Wesleyan University, Bellcore, the University of Virginia, the University of Illinois, Indiana University, the University of Washington, the University of Pittsburgh, the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute in Moscow, the Tilburg University, Universitá di Modena, the World Bank, the ASSA meetings in Boston, the Conference on Economies in Transition in Falls Church, Virginia, the Boston meetings of the Eastern Economic Association, and the Society for Economic Dynamics and Control meetings in Mexico City.Funding
This research was generously supported by the National Council on Soviet and East European Research and IREX.