Institutions in Education- The Importance of Skill Formation and Human Capital

We discuss education as a process of human capital formation and thus highlight the economic importance of education. It is the main goal of this volume to provide clues for optimum school organization and institutions, such as incentive structures and competition. We provide a framework to study educational production and the implications of multiple teacher effort dimensions on optimum incentive contracts. The influence of spatial competition on education and its effect on school choice and educational achievement is discussed in a separate model. In a dynamic general equilibrium framework with overlapping generations and probabilistic aging we discuss the effects of population aging on education decisions in the presence of a pay-as-you-go pension system. As a response to population aging, in a small open economy with a fixed interest rate, our simulation shows that GDP is depressed due to an adverse effect on skill choice and labor supply. Postponed retirement is a potentially dampening policy measure due to its encouragement of human capital formation.