Economics Seminar（2016-10）

Topic:The Out of State Tuition Distortion
Speaker: Brian Knight, Brown University
Time: Tuesday, June 14, 14:00-15:30
Place: Room 217, Guanghua Building 2
   

Abstract:    

Public universities in the United State typically charge much higher tuition to non-residents. Perhaps due, at least in part, to these differences in tuition, roughly 75 percent of students nationwide attend in-state institutions. While distinguishing between residents and non-residents is consistent with welfare maximization by state governments, it may lead to economic inefficiencies from a national perspective, with potential welfare gains associated with reducing the gap between in-state and out-of-state tuition. We first formalize this idea in a simple model. While a social planner maximizing national welfare does not distinguish between residents and non-residents, state governments set higher tuition for non-residents. The welfare gains from reducing this tuition gap can be characterized by a sufficient statistic relating out-of-state enrollment to the tuition gap. We then estimate this sufficient statistic via a border discontinuity design using data on the geographic distribution of student residences by institution.        

Introduction:

Brian Knight is a Professor of Economics at Brown University and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He previously worked as an economist in the Division of Research and Statistics at the Federal Reserve Board and has held visiting faculty positions at Yale University and Harvard University. He received his PhD in 2000 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his B.S. in 1992 from Miami University. Research interests include political economy, fiscal federalism, and local public finance. His research has been published in American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of the European Economic Association, Economic Journal, International Economic Review, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics and Journal of Public Economics. He is also a co-editor at the Journal of Public Economics and is on the Editorial Board at the American Economic Review and the National Tax Journal.
//vivo.brown.edu/display/bknight