In the rapidly changing atmosphere of the global economy, productivity has become a very important concept for long-term economic growth, development, regional and global competitiveness, raising social living standards and increasing the level of welfare for countries. In the 21st century, when scientific knowledge, technology, innovation,…

The Government of Kenya spends 30% of its budget on education. It is commonly assumed that education has an important positive effect on economic growth, but to date the evidence for this assumption has been surprisingly weak. This study aimed at exploring the relationships between the amount of investments in education and economic growth. It was…

This paper challenges Hanushek and Woessmann's (2008) contention that the quality and not the quantity of schooling determines a nation's rate of economic growth. I first show that their statistical analysis is flawed. I then show that when a nation's average test scores and average schooling attainment are included in a national income model,…

We decompose annual average years of schooling series for Portugal into different schooling levels series. By estimating a number of vector autoregressions, we provide measures of aggregate and disaggregate economic growth impacts of different education levels. Increasing education at all levels except tertiary has a positive and significant…

An extensive body of research indicates a significant correlation between gender equality and the level of economic and social development of a country. Gender inequities have been found to influence the way members of the family spend their time and resources. Evidence suggests that women with more control over resources will spend more money on…

Max Weber attributed the higher economic prosperity of Protestant regions to a Protestant work ethic. We provide an alternative theory, where Protestant economies prospered because instruction in reading the Bible generated the human capital crucial to economic prosperity. County-level data from late 19th-century Prussia reveal that Protestantism…