【题 目】The Macroeconomic Consequences of Competition for College Admissions
【时 间】2025年12月24日（星期三），14:00-15:30
【地 点】后主楼1722会议室
【主讲人】顾诗骏 讲师（中央财经大学经济学院）
【主持人】王 言 讲师（欧洲杯 ）
摘要：To study how competition in college admissions drives parental investment and informs child development policies, we develop a heterogeneous-agent life-cycle model in which parents invest in their children’s human capital not only to increase future labor productivity but also to compete for limited college seats. Inefficiency arises because each family takes the admissions threshold as given and thus does not internalize how its own investment raises the admissions bar for others. Estimating our model with Chinese data, we find that a significant portion of parental monetary investment is driven by this competition-induced externality. Policies that reduce competition can deliver sizable welfare gains by correcting the externality, but their long-run effects are also shaped by intergenerational dynamics: lower investment today can worsen the human capital distribution of future generations. We show that a policy mix—taxing private education spending while subsidizing public investment—optimally balances the efficiency gains from externality correction against the need to sustain long-run human capital accumulation, thereby improving overall welfare.
报告人简介：顾诗骏，中央财经大学经济学院讲师、硕士生导师、明尼苏达大学获得经济学博士。研究领域为宏观经济学、劳动经济学、发展经济学。研究课题涉及教育投资与人力资本发展，财富分布与家庭消费、中国经济改革与转轨。学术研究发表在Journal of Monetary Economics,、Journal of International Money and Finance等国际学术期刊，主持国家自然科学基金青年项目。