Education Policies and Taxation without Commitment

We study the implications of limited commitment on education and tax policies set by benevolent governments. Consistent with real-world practices, a government can decide to subsidize different levels of education at different rates. A lack of commitment, however, affects the optimal structure of education subsidies. The direction of the effect depends on how labor taxes are designed. With linear labor tax rates and a transfer for redistribution, subsidies become more progressive. By contrast, if the government is only constrained by informational asymmetries when designing taxes, subsidies become more regressive.