eprintid: 18334 rev_number: 23 eprint_status: archive userid: 1482 importid: 105 dir: disk0/00/01/83/34 datestamp: 2015-09-21 13:08:15 lastmod: 2024-04-18 11:33:39 status_changed: 2019-09-06 08:14:20 type: monograph metadata_visibility: show creators_name: De Donder, Philippe creators_name: Martinez-Mora, Francisco creators_idrefppn: 199756120 title: On the Political Economy of University Admission Standards ispublished: pub subjects: subjects_ECO abstract: We study the political determination of the proportion of students attending university when access to higher education is rationed by admission tests. Parents differ in income and in the ability of their unique child. They vote over the minimum ability level required to attend public universities, which are tuition-free and financed by proportional income taxation. University graduates become high skilled, while the other children attend vocational school and become low skilled. Even though individual preferences are neither single-peaked nor single-crossing, we obtain a unique majority voting equilibrium, which can be either classical (with 50% of the population attending university) or ends-against- the-middle, with less than 50% attending university (and parents of low and high ability children favoring a smaller university system). The majority chosen university size is smaller than the Pareto efficient level in an ends-against-the-middle equilibrium. Higher income inequality decreases the majority chosen size of the university. A larger positive correlation between parents income and childs ability leads to a larger university populated by a larger fraction of rich students, in line with the so-called participation gap. Our results are robust to the introduction of private schooling alternatives, financed with fees. date: 2015-05 date_type: published publisher: TSE Working Paper official_url: http://tse-fr.eu/pub/29365 faculty: tse divisions: tse keywords: majority voting keywords: ends-against-the-middle keywords: non single-peaked preferences keywords: non single-crossing preferences keywords: higher education participation gap keywords: income ability correlation keywords: size of university language: en has_fulltext: TRUE subjectsJEL: JEL_D72 subjectsJEL: JEL_I22 view_date_year: 2015 full_text_status: public monograph_type: working_paper series: TSE Working Paper volume: 15-582 place_of_pub: Toulouse pages: 48 institution: Université Toulouse 1 Capitole department: Toulouse School of Economics book_title: TSE Working Paper oai_identifier: oai:tse-fr.eu:29365 harvester_local_overwrite: oai_set harvester_local_overwrite: faculty harvester_local_overwrite: site harvester_local_overwrite: department harvester_local_overwrite: pending harvester_local_overwrite: institution harvester_local_overwrite: place_of_pub harvester_local_overwrite: pages harvester_local_overwrite: creators_idrefppn oai_lastmod: 2024-04-17T15:08:05Z oai_set: tse oai_set: ut1c site: ut1 citation: De Donder, Philippe and Martinez-Mora, Francisco (2015) On the Political Economy of University Admission Standards. TSE Working Paper, n. 15-582, Toulouse document_url: https://publications.ut-capitole.fr/id/eprint/18334/1/wp_tse_582.pdf