Wealth and assets have a reliable positive relationship with the achievement outcomes of students. Various approaches to understanding student achievement may inform the understanding of how wealth seems to influence children's educational experiences. This paper describes several perspectives from the student achievement literature within the…

We evaluate the contribution of investment on education to Sri Lanka's economic growth during the period 1959-2008. Physical capital, economic policy changes and the ethnic war are also evaluated due to their substantial importance. This study uses a framework encompassing both the neoclassical and endogenous growth model. The impact of education…

On the basis of those respondents in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) who change jobs with an intervening period of education reinvestment, the conventional assumption of linearity of log wages in years of schooling is strongly rejected: a typical reinvestment for the 1980 through 1993 period is associated with a rise of about 3.5…

The paper argues that access to public infrastructure plays a crucial role on the presence of private schools in a community, as it could not only minimise the cost of production, but also ensure a high return to private investment. Results using community, school and child/household-level PROBE survey data from five north Indian states provide…

Administrative skill is essential to organizational effectiveness. Yet, few studies examine how human capital investments over a career affect selection into administration. We use panel data for economists to estimate the probability of choosing administration over a pure academic track. The results show that, while research-specific human…

Skill development involves important choices for individuals and school designers: should individuals and schools specialize, or should they aim for an optimal combination of skills? We analyze this question by employing mean-standard deviation analysis and show how cost structure, benefit structure and risk attitudes jointly determine the optimal…

The gradualist approach to economic transition in Belarus would contribute to form the a priori expectation that the rate of return to education is low and the earnings profile by work experience flat, like they supposedly were under central planning. However, the first available estimates of Mincerian earnings equations based on the Belarusian…

We discuss the evidence on the effectiveness of preschool programs using results from three well-known intervention studies: the Chicago Child-Parent Centers, High/Scope Perry Preschool Program, and the Carolina Abecedarian Project. Results from cost-benefit analyses of other programs for younger and older children also are reported. Given that…

Building on the existing education literature, we address two interrelated questions. First, how sensitive are estimated returns to two-year and four-year colleges to the inclusion of in-school work experience? Second, do the estimated returns to in-school work experience vary by type of educational institution attended? Regarding the first…

This paper investigates the returns to education in two Southern EU countries, Portugal and Spain, both characterized by a relatively high self-employment rate. The impact of education on both wage earners and the self-employed is analyzed by using a comparable data set coming from the European Community Household Panel during the period…

We study whether the combined significant reduction in the pupil-teacher ratio and increase in parental education observed in Italy between the end of the second World War and the end of the 1980s have had a significant impact on the educational attainment and the labor market returns of a representative sample of Italians born between 1941 and…

This paper analyzes how James Tobin's widely cited concept of "intergenerational equity" for university endowments relates to the economic concepts of intertemporal substitutability and risk aversion. I show that Tobin's concept of intergenerational equity is a very special case of intertemporal substitutability; a special case that implies very…

Estimates the returns to schooling in Brazil in 1980, by fitting earnings functions to census microdata. The average private rate of return has fallen by about one-third from 1970 but still remains a respectable 12 to 13 percent. When schooling levels are disaggregated, the lowest private rates emerge for primary education, and the highest for…

Discusses the overall efficiency of investment in primary and secondary education and technology transfer via investment both in physical capital and higher education in 30 of the poorest African countries. A high (21.2 percent) rate of return to investment in primary and secondary education was found. Includes six tables and 20 references. (MLH)

Analyzes household and school survey data from poor counties in six Chinese provinces to examine the effects of poverty, intra-household decision-making, and school quality on educational investments and learning outcomes. Finds, for example, that being poor and credit-constrained does not significantly affect learning in school (as measured by…