The incredibly low levels of learning and the generally dysfunctional public sector schooling systems in many (though not all) developing countries are the result of a capability trap (Pritchett et al. 2010). Two phenomena reinforce persistent failure of schooling systems to produce adequate...

The incredibly low levels of learning and the generally dysfunctional public sector schooling systems in many (though not all) developing countries are the result of a capability trap (Pritchett et al. 2010). Two phenomena reinforce persistent failure of schooling systems to produce adequate...

This paper is part of the Copenhagen Consensus process, which aims to assess and evaluate the opportunities available to address the ten largest challenges facing the world. One of these ten challenges is the “lack of education.” This paper will define “lack of education,” in terms of...

Measurement error is an enormous problem in empirical work. In some types of analysis, it is often ignored for various reasons. In some others, however, it cannot be ignored because it affects the results of analysis significantly. We use a simple procedure to estimate the extent of measurement...

The social impacts of Indonesia’s crisis, while serious, have fortunately been less dramatic than early reports suggested. Rather than the universal devastation in poverty, employment, education and health so widely predicted and repeated in the media, new data reporting on conditions as of...

Does the government control of school systems facilitate equality in school quality? There is a trade-off. On the one hand, government direct control of schools, typically through a large scale hierarchical organization, could produce equalization across schools by providing uniformity in...

Arguably nothing is more important to long-run improvement in human well being than a high quality basic education for every child. Promoting the achievement of this goal requires a serviceable positive model of education policies—a coherent causal explanation of why governments actually do...

The theoretical, conceptual, and practical difficulties with the use of cross-national data on schooling are so severe using aggregate data for any purpose for which individual level data would do should be avoided. There are, however, three questions for which the use of cross-national data on...