Annual Review of Economics · 2019 · W. Bentley MacLeod、Miguel Urquiola
中文摘要
米尔顿·弗里德曼认为，赋予家长选择学校的自由将改善教育。他的论点简单而有说服力，因为它将消费品市场的研究结论延伸到了教育领域。我们回顾了相关证据，发现这些证据对弗里德曼的预测得出了出人意料的混合结果。一个关键原因是，家庭选择学校时似乎往往依据学校的绝对学业成绩，而非其增值表现。我们表明，在一个基于三项要素的模型中，这种选择可以是理性的；自弗里德曼研究这一问题以来，经济学家一直强调这三项要素。第一，教育是对人力资本的投资。第二，劳动力市场可能存在工资溢价：技能水平相同的个人，如果与生产率更高的企业相匹配，便可能获得更高的工资。第三，距离会影响学校选择，也影响学校所产生的安置结果。这些因素意味着，仅靠选择这一机制过于粗糙，不足以确保学校教育的有效供给。
Abstract
Milton Friedman argued that giving parents freedom to choose schools would improve education. His argument was simple and compelling because it extended results from markets for consumer goods to education. We review the evidence, which yields surprisingly mixed results on Friedman's prediction. A key reason is that households often seem to choose schools based on their absolute achievement rather than their value added. We show that this can be rational in a model based on three ingredients that economists have highlighted since Friedman worked on the issue. First, education is an investment into human capital. Second, labor markets can feature wage premia: Individuals of a given skill level may receive higher wages if they match to more productive firms. Third, distance influences school choice and the placements that schools produce. These factors imply that choice alone is too crude a mechanism to ensure the effective provision of schooling.