School Resources and the Quality of Education: Is there a link?

The aim of this paper is to verify whether school resource factors have an impact on the quality of education. This latter is measured with the help of a unique database on student scores in international skills tests. The general difficulties inherent in this type of study are the possibility of endogeneity bias and measurement errors. After estimation bias correction, we show that improvement in the quality of educational systems does not necessarily require an increase in school resources. When an alternative indicator of the performance of educational systems is used, our results are confirmed. Consequently, one should remain cautious about recommending purely financial measures to improve quality of education.