【Macro Seminar】College as Human Capital Investments or Tournament: A Macroeconomic Analysis
2024/11/05
研討會日期 : 2024-11-05
時間 : 14:30
主講人 : Professor Siyu Shi (史思宇)
地點 : Conference Room B110
主持人 : Professor T. Terry Cheung
演講者簡介 : Professor Siyu Shi received his Ph.D. in Economics from Arizona State University in 2023. He is a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute. His research interests are Macroeconomics, Technological Change, and Inequality.
演講摘要 : A college education is commonly viewed as a productive investment in the human capital theory. However, it also serves a competitive purpose to stand out in the job market, like a tournament contest. In this paper, I study the relative importance of these two channels in determining college attendance. I build a general equilibrium life-cycle model with a college decision, human capital investments, and skill allocation. The model's novelty is that workers are allocated to different occupations based on their relative ranking of human capital, so college education also has a competitive value. Results show that the competitive channel accounts for 39% of college attendance but depresses aggregate output by 1.3%. In addition, I evaluate the optimal policy of taxation and college subsidies, and find that lowering college subsidies and the progressivity of labor income tax would increase social welfare by 4.4%. This policy system mitigates over-investment in college education and alleviates negative externalities brought by the competitive margin.
