Should vocational education be taxed? Lessons from a matching model with generalists and specialists

Ophélie Cerdan (1) , Bruno Decreuse (1)

1 GREQAM - Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille

Should education become more vocational or more general? We address this question in two steps. We first build and solve a two-sector matching model with generalists and specialists. Generalists pursue jobs in both sectors; however, they come second in job queues. Specialists seek for jobs in a single sector; they come first in job queues. Self-selection in education type vehicles three main externalities: specialists boost job creation in each sector; generalists improve the efficiency of the matching technology; generalists exacerbate firms' coordination problems. We then calibrate the model on the labor market for upper-secondary graduates in OECD countries. In each country, we match the proportion of specialists and unemployment rates by type of education in 2000. Self-selection is always inefficient: taxing vocational education to reduce the proportion of specialists down to the efficient level could reduce unemployment rates (for upper-secondary graduates) by 1.1 to 1.8 percentage points.

Mots clés: Matching frictions; Education; Efficiency; Calibration

Domaines: Economies et finances

Ophélie Cerdan, Bruno Decreuse. Should vocational education be taxed? Lessons from a matching model with generalists and specialists. 2011. ⟨halshs-00580187⟩