GOVERNMENT EFFECTIVENESS, EDUCATION, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND WELL-BEING: ANALYSIS OF EUROPEAN COUNTRIES IN COMPARISON WITH THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA, 2000-2007

In this article we present an econometric analysis of the relationship between several indicators of economic development and wellbeing in Europe, the United States and Canada. We calculate a compound index of several indicators based on three groups: 1) Life satisfaction and income per capita, 2) governance indicators based on World Bank, including Voice and Accounting Index and Government Effectiveness Index, and 3) Educational indicators, including public education expenditure per capita and average total years of schooling, The most outstanding countries in the overall index are Norway, Denmark, Sweden, the United States, Austria, Ireland, Switzerland, Canada, Finland, Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The three groups of indicators are highly correlated in several ways, due to the important positive effects of education on economic development and governance effectiveness, as well as to the positive effects of the “Voice and Accounting” index on “Governance Effectiveness”, and the importance of the latter for economic development, as it is shown in the estimated econometric models.