How do people trade off resources between quick and slow learners?

Arbeitspapier

How society invests in human capital is important for economic growth and social welfare. The paper reports from the first experiment designed to elicit people's preferences for how to prioritize educational resources, where 2,000 Americans trade off educational resources between quick and slow learners. I find that they give strong priority to slow learners and assign two thirds of the educational resources to this group. Both cost efficiency and the motivation of the learners causally affect the resource allocation. The findings provide important insights for the present policy debate on how to distribute educational resources in society.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Discussion Papers of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods ; No. 2021/4

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual ; Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles ; Distribution: General ; Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement ; Education and Inequality ; Education: Government Policy
• Subject: Human capital investment ; preferences ; inequality ; experiment ; education

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Falch, Ranveig
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2021

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/230989
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET