Determinants of public education spending in 21 OECD democracies, 1980–2001

Abstract

Abstract This paper focuses on the analysis of determinants of public education spending in OECD countries. It starts out by reviewing and replicating the model presented by Castles (1989 Castles, F. G. 1989. Explaining public education expenditure in OECD nations. European Journal of Political Research, 17: 431–48. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 1998 Castles, F. G. 1998. Comparative Public Policy: Patterns of Post-War Transformation, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. [Google Scholar]), finding that only a few of his explanatory variables remain significant in a pooled time-series framework. I present an alternative model that contains socio-economic, political, and institutional variables: the level of economic development, the magnitude of demographic demand, the constitutional veto structure, the level of public social expenditures, the degree of tax-revenue decentralization as well as government participation of conservative parties.