Over 1 billion people currently live in slums, with the number of slum dwellers only expected
to grow in the coming decades. The vast majority of slums are located in and around urban …

In this paper we focus on education as a private decision to invest in “human capital” and the
estimation of the rate of return to that private investment. While the literature is replete with …

Direct measures of labor-force quality from international mathematics and science test
scores are strongly related to growth. Indirect specification tests are generally consistent with …

This paper summarizes and tries to reconcile evidence from the microeconometric and
empirical macro growth literatures on the effect of schooling on income and GDP growth …

The article documents five stylized facts of economic growth.(1) The “residual”(total factor
productivity, tfp) rather than factor accumulation accounts for most of the income and growth …

Economists have speculated for at least a century that the social return to education may
exceed the private return. In this paper, I estimate spillovers from college education by …

Many economists and policymakers believe that education creates positive externalities.
Indeed, average schooling in US states is highly correlated with state wage levels, even …

Do societies choose inefficient policies and institutions? An extension of the Coase theorem
to politics would suggest the answer is no. This paper discusses various approaches to …

What is the effect of an increase in the overall level of human capital on the economy of a
city? Although much is known about the private return to education, much less is known …

Women and men often receive the same percentage increase in their wage rates with
advances in schooling. Because these returns decline with more schooling, the marginal …