When: 2:30pm, Thursday, Nov.12, 2020

Where: Tecent Meeting ID: 397 234 712

Topic: For a long history, all countries experienced economic stagnation without schooling until subsidized compulsory schooling was instituted. We argue that stable poverty traps and balanced growth arise from empirically plausible decreasing returns to scale (DRS) in education and threshold human capital externalities for increasing returns to scale (IRS) in production. We derive optimal education policies to eradicate poverty and internalize externalities. Compulsory education for threshold human capital is necessary to escape poverty traps. Despite IRS in production, optimal subsidies on schooling time and education spending financed by income taxes can fully internalize externalities because DRS in education maintains resource scarcity.

Lecturer: Professor Zhang Jie is from Department of Economics of National University of Singapore. He is an expert on macroeconomics, public economics, economic growth, and income distribution. He has over 50 top-tier academic publications, involving Journal of Public Economics、Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control、Journal of Health Economics，Journal of Population Economics、Journal of Money, Credit and Banking、Journal of Development Economics etc.

Organizers: Office of International Cooperation & College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University