Liquidity Constraints, Fiscal Externalities, and Optimal Tuition Subsidies

摘要

A large literature focuses on two important rationales for government subsidies to college students: positive fiscal externalities from a larger tax base, and liquidity constraints. This paper provides a first attempt to gauge the relative importance of these mechanisms. I use US data in combination with two modeling approaches: calibration of a simple structural model of human capital accumulation, and a "sufficient statistics" approach. The resulting optimal subsidies are larger than median public tuition by about $3,000 per year. This finding is driven by fiscal externalities; optimal tuition subsidy policy is not sensitive to the extent of liquidity constraints.