An Explanation for Public Provision of Schooling: The Importance of Indoctrination

Abstract

* This article was completed while I was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution and represents the unpublished theory and cross-country empirical sections from my 1984 University of California, Los Angeles, dissertation. Armen Alchian, Harold Demsetz, Gertrud Fremling, David Friedman, Robert Hansen, Ben Klein, Ed Lazear, Russell Roberts, Finis Welch, E. G. West, an unusually helpful anonymous referee from this Journal, and the participants in seminars at Auburn University, the University of California at Los Angeles and at Davis, California State University at Hayward and Northridge, the Hoover Institution, George Mason University, the University of Houston, Southern Methodist University, the U.S. Department of Education, Texas A&M University, and the 1987 Public Choice meetings in Tucson, Arizona, provided valuable discussions. I would like to thank Maury Pearl for very helpful research assistance. Any remaining errors are, of course, my responsibility.