Collective choice and individual action: Education policy and social mobility in England |
| |
| Affiliation: | 1. Agricultural-, Environmental- and Food Policy, Department of Agricultural and Nutrition Sciences, Martin-Luther-University, Halle-Wittenberg, 06099 Halle, Germany;2. University of Wyoming, 112 W. 2d St., Casper, WY 82601, USA;1. University of Mannheim and CEPR, London, United Kingdom;2. University of Mannheim, Germany;1. California Institute of Technology, 1200 East California Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91125, United States;2. Calgent LLC, 11011 Torreyana Road, San Diego, CA 92121, United States;1. Department of Economics, Bar-Ilan University, 52900 Ramat-Gan, Israel;2. Institute for Applied Microeconomics, University of Bonn, Adenauerallee 24-42, 53113 Bonn, Germany;1. School of Economics, Singapore Management University, 90 Stamford Road, 178903, Singapore;2. Division of Economics, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 14 Nanyang Drive, 637332, Singapore;1. LEO, Université François Rabelais, Tours. 50, Avenue Jean Portalis BP 37206, Tours Cedex 03 France;2. Università di Salerno, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Statistiche and CSEF, Via Giovanni Paolo II, 132, 84084 Fisciano SA, Italy |
| |
| Abstract: | It is recognised that expressive preferences may play a major role in determining voting decisions because the low probability of being decisive in elections undermines standard instrumental reasoning. Expressive and instrumental preferences may deviate and in electoral settings it is more important to make policies expressively appealing. But policies are even more attractive if they can be made both expressively and instrumentally appealing. This paper studies education policy in England and proposes that the argument for increased state spending in school education is expressively appealing as it appears equitable, but the allocation of students to schools by catchment area is also instrumentally appealing to middle-class families. Allocation to schools by lottery may be expressively but not instrumentally appealing. Cutting education spending and dividing the proceeds between a tax cut to the affluent and a cash transfer to the poor may be instrumentally but not expressively appealing. The effort to provide instrumentally appealing policies with sufficient ethical content to satisfy expressive preferences may lead to inefficiency and distract attention from more serious ethical problems related to the policies. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
| 本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录！ |
|
