| School choice programs, such as vouchers or charter schools, offer parents an alternative to traditional public schools, while removing students from traditional public schools. If there are returns to scale in education, a major exodus of students from public schools could increase the average cost of students left behind. In my first essay, I use a structural model to estimate the magnitudes of the scale economies, and then use these estimates to simulate the increase in average cost in the public schools from a choice program. Depending on the assumptions made, the long run increase in average cost of a student who remains in public school is on the order of {dollar}500.; In my second essay, I study the effects of vouchers on teachers' unions. The recent literature on vouchers abstracts from the response of teachers' unions to the introduction of vouchers. This paper investigates how a teachers' union reacts to vouchers when constrained by political support. I present a model of schooling with households, a rent-seeking public school teachers' union, private schools, and private school vouchers. Perhaps the most surprising of the results here is that for some voucher amounts, union rents increase. However, there is a critical voucher level at which the union rents begin to decline. This is a result of the loss in political support for the union as the outside option for the households increases. The quality of the public school increases as a result of the unions need to retain political support. |
