The role of improved schooling, a central part of most development strategies, has become
controversial because expansion of school attainment has not guaranteed improved …

We develop a new metric for the distribution of educational achievement across countries
that can further track the cognitive skill distribution within countries and over time. Cross-…

An emerging economic literature over the past decade has made use of international tests
of educational achievement to analyze the determinants and impacts of cognitive skills. The …

Max Weber attributed the higher economic prosperity of Protestant regions to a Protestant
work ethic. We provide an alternative theory: Protestant economies prospered because …

Students in some countries do far better on international achievement tests than students in
other countries. Is this all due to differences in what students bring with them to school—…

Policy proposals promoting vocational education focus on the school-to-work transition. But
with technological change, gains in youth employment may be offset by less adaptability and …

The worldwide school closures in early 2020 led to losses in learning that will not easily be
made up for even if schools quickly return to their prior performance levels. These losses will …

Education has long been viewed as an important determinant of economic well-being. The
theoretical growth literature emphasizes at least three mechanisms through which education …

Existing estimates of the labor-market returns to human capital give a distorted picture of the
role of skills across different economies. International comparisons of earnings analyses …

Decentralization of decision-making is among the most intriguing recent school reforms, in
part because countries went in opposite directions over the past decade and because prior …