Human capital investments in a democracy

C-Tier
Journal: Economics Letters
Year: 2025
Volume: 247
Issue: C

Authors (2)

Papageorgiou, Stylianos (not in RePEc) Xefteris, Dimitrios (University of Cyprus)

Score contribution per author:

0.503 = (α=2.01 / 2 authors) × 0.5x C-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

A public and a private investment in human capital, plus intrinsic skills, contribute to each household’s human capital. The public investment is decided by the winner of a democratic election between two office-motivated candidates. We show that households with too low or too high human capital are less likely to vote for the candidate that supports the larger public investment, as opposed to households with moderate human capital. Moreover, the property of single-peaked preferences is violated. Despite the absence of well-behaved preferences, we identify sufficient conditions for the existence, uniqueness and efficiency of an equilibrium public investment in human capital.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:ecolet:v:247:y:2025:i:c:s0165176524006074
Journal Field
General
Author Count
2
Added to Database
2026-01-29