Existing growth research provides little explanation for the very large differences in long-run growth performance across OECD countries. We show that cognitive skills can account for growth differences within the OECD, whereas a range of economic institutions and quantitative measures of...

We investigate whether a causal interpretation of the robust association between cognitive skills and economic growth is appropriate and whether cross-country evidence supports a case for the economic benefits of effective school policy. We develop a new common metric that allows tracking...

Using a dynamic skill accumulation model of schooling and labor supply with learning-by-doing, we decompose early life-cycle wage growth of U.S. white males into four main sources: education, hours worked, cognitive skills (AFQT scores) and unobserved heterogeneity, and evaluate the effect of...

We show that a calibrated dynamic skill accumulation model allowing for comparative advantages, can explain the weak (or negative) effects of schooling on productivity that have been recently reported (i) in the micro literature on compulsory schooling, ii) in the micro literature on estimating...

During the early Nineties the proportion of UK graduates doubled over a very short period of time. This paper investigates the effect of the expansion on early labour market attainment, focusing on over-education. We define over-education by combining occupation codes and a self-reported measure...

In this paper we investigate the effect of Head Start on long term education and labor market outcomes using data from the NLSY79. The contributions to the existing literature on the effectiveness of Head Start are threefold: (1) we are the first to examine distributional effects of Head Start...

We explore the effects of persistent income shocks on human capital using oil price fluctuations in a large sample of relevant African countries and employing micro data from multiple waves of the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS). Theoretically, such shocks enable human capital investment via...

University fees have recently trebled in England, prompting fears that young people may be put off from participating in higher education. We investigate students' knowledge and their receptiveness to information campaigns about the costs and benefits of staying on in education. We compare the...

Median instructional spending per full-time equivalent (FTE) student at American colleges and universities has grown at a slower rate the median spending per FTE in a number of other expenditure categories during the last two decades. We use institutional level panel data and a variety of...

Using the Canadian General Social Survey we compute returns to post-secondary education relative to high-school. Unlike previous research using Canadian data, our dataset allows us to control for ability selection into higher education. We find strong evidence of positive ability selection into...