Essays on the Market for Higher Education and Public Policies

My dissertation analyzes the government provision of education. The first chapter evaluates how state performance-based funding affects student outcomes and other intermediate measures. I find significant increases to completion rates, retention rates and student's future income attributed to these programs. Further, the improvements increase with the amount of state funding allocated based on college performance. My second chapter uses a quantitative equilibrium model of the market for higher education to evaluate the impact of performance-based federal financial aid. The model reveals that basing a rating system entirely on one measure may lead to minor increases in the incentivized area and considerable decreases in other areas. My final chapter develops a majority voting model with both K-12 and post-secondary education to gain insight into how the education budget is allocated in the presence of heterogeneous agents with conflicting preferences. The model predicts an inverted U-shape relationship between income inequality and the education fund allocation within a state. This prediction is confirmed by the data.