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In this paper we review various models that have been proposed for the study of mixed oligopoly, that is markets in which private and public firm compete on equal basis using only market instruments.

This paper studies the education policy chosen by a utilitarian government. In the model, households differ in their income and in their children's ability; income is observed by the government, but ability is private information. Households can use private education, but cannot borrow to finance it. The government can finance education with income tax, but at the cost of blunting the individuals' incentive to exert labour market effort. The optimal education policy we derive is elitist: it increases the spread between the educational achievement of the bright and the less bright individuals, compared to private provision. It is also such that the education received by less bright individuals depends positively on their parental income. Finally, the optimal education policy is input regressive, in the sense of Arrow (1971, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 38, 175-208): households with higher income and brighter children contribute less in tuition fees towards the cost of the education system than households with lower income and less bright children.

The efforts exerted by children, parents, and schools affect the outcome of the education process. We build this idea into a theoretical model where the effort exerted by the three groups of agents is simultaneously determined as a Nash equilibrium. The empirical analysis tests the model using the British National Child Development Study and finds support for this idea. We identify which factors affect educational attainment directly and which indirectly through effort. From a policy perspective, the paper indicates that affecting effort directly would have a positive impact on attainment. © 2010 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.