https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w15902/w15902.pdf

A new data set of educational attainment in the world, 1950–2010

This paper examines the robustness of explanatory variables in cross-country economic growth regressions. It employs a novel approach, Bayesian Averaging of Classical Estimates (BACE), which constructs estimates as a weighted average of OLS estimates for every possible combination of included variables. The weights applied to individual regressions are justified on Bayesian grounds in a way similar to the well-known Schwarz criterion. Of 32 explanatory variables we find 11 to be robustly partially correlated with long-term growth and another five variables to be marginally related. Of all the variables considered, the strongest evidence is for the initial level of real GDP per capita.

Determinants of Long-Term Growth: A Bayesian Averaging of Classical Estimates (Bace) Approach

A number of economists find that growth and schooling are highly correlated across countries. A model is examined in which the ability to build on the human capital of one's elders plays an important role in linking growth to schooling. The model is calibrated to quantify the strength of the effect of schooling on growth by using evidence from the labor literature on Mincerian returns to education. The upshot is that the impact of schooling on growth explains less than one-third of the empirical cross-country relationship. The ability of reverse causality to explain this empirical relationship is also investigated.

/pdf/does-schooling-cause-growth-21i5hp5nfv.pdf

Does Schooling Cause Growth

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 Much microeconometric evidence suggests that education is an important causal determinant of income for individuals within countries At a national level, however, recent studies have found that increases in educational attainment are unrelated to economic growth This discrepancy appears to be a result of the high rate of measurement error in first-differenced cross-country education data After accounting for measurement error, the effect of changes in educational attainment on income growth in cross-country data is at least as great as microeconometric estimates of the rate of return to years of schooling Another finding of the macro growth literature--that economic growth depends positively on the initial stock of human capital--is not robust when the assumption of a constant-coefficient model is relaxed

/pdf/education-for-growth-why-and-for-whom-10wmtzqctx.pdf

Education for Growth: Why and for Whom?

The role of improved schooling, a central part of most development strategies, has become controversial because expansion of school attainment has not guaranteed improved economic conditions. This paper reviews the role of cognitive skills in promoting economic well-being, with a particular focus on the role of school quality and quantity. It concludes that there is strong evidence that the cognitive skills of the population – rather than mere school attainment – are powerfully related to individual earnings, to the distribution of income, and to economic growth. New empirical results show the importance of both minimal and high level skills, the complementarity of skills and quality of economic institutions, and robustness of the relationship between skills and growth. International comparisons incorporating expanded data on cognitive skills reveal much larger skill deficits in developing countries than generally derived from just school enrollment and attainment. The magnitude of change needed makes clear that closing the economic gap with developed countries will require major structural changes in schooling institutions.

The role of cognitive skills in economic development

We present a new data set for years of schooling across countries for the 1960-2000 period. The series are constructed from the OECD database on edu- cational attainment and from surveys published by UNESCO. Two features that improve the quality of our data with respect to other series, particularly for series in first-differences, are the use of surveys based on uniform classification systems of education over time, and an intensified use of information by age groups. As a result of the improvement in quality, these new series can be used as a direct substitute for Barro and Lee's (2001; Oxford Economic Papers, 3, 541-563) data in empirical research. In standard cross-country growth regressions we find that our series yield significant coefficients for schooling. In panel data estimates our series are also sig- nificant even when the regressions account for the accumulation of physical capital. Moreover, the estimated macro return is consistent with those reported in labour studies. These results differ from the typical findings of the earlier literature and are a consequence of the reduction in measurement error in the series.

/pdf/growth-and-human-capital-good-data-good-results-48jga05atd.pdf

Growth and Human Capital: Good Data, Good Results

This Paper presents a new set of data on human capital. It is constructed so as to stay as close as possible to the censuses compiled by national, OECD or UNESCO sources. We then use these data to test a model that embeds the Mincerian approach to human capital into the Mankiw, Romer and Weil version of the neo-classical model. We find that the model performs extremely well. Physical and human capital appears to carry social returns that are essentially identical to the private ones.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/DP3025.pdf?abstractid=290642&mirid=1

This article analyzes the specific and critical role of trust in scientists on both the support for and compliance with nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. We exploit large-scale, longitudinal, and representative surveys for 12 countries over the period from March to December 2020, and we complement the analysis with experimental data. We find that trust in scientists is the key driving force behind individual support for and compliance with NPIs and for favorable attitudes toward vaccination. The effect of trust in government is more ambiguous and tends to diminish support for and compliance with NPIs in countries where the recommendations from scientists and the government were not aligned. Trust in others also has seemingly paradoxical effects: in countries where social trust is high, the support for NPIs is low due to higher expectations that others will voluntary social distance. Our individual-level longitudinal data also allows us to evaluate the effects of within-person changes in trust over the pandemic: we show that trust levels and, in particular, trust in scientists have changed dramatically for individuals and within countries, with important subsequent effects on compliant behavior and support for NPIs. Such findings point out the challenging but critical need to maintain trust in scientists during a lasting pandemic that strains citizens and governments.

Trust in scientists in times of pandemic: Panel evidence from 12 countries.

We argue in this paper that canceling the debt of the poorest countries was a good thing, but that it should not imply that the debt instrument should be foregone. Debt and debt cancellations are indeed two complementary instruments which, if properly managed, perform better than either loans or grants taken in isolation. The core of the intuition, which we develop in a simple two-period model, relates to the fact that the poorest countries are also the most volatile, so that contingent facilities, explicitly incorporating debt cancellation mechanisms, are a valuable instrument.

Loans or Grants

Against all odds, the euro turned out to be a weak currency. We argue that this outcome can readily be explained by the policy mix that was chosen at the onset of the period: tight fiscal policies following the convergence mechanism that was imposed by the Maastricht treaty and loose monetary policy that resulted from the convergence of interest rates to the lower point of the spectrum. We investigate this outcome empirically and show that the euro's weakness can be understood as the result of an excess supply in the zone, which is channelled abroad in the usual 'beggar thy neighbour' way. We also outline how an optimal policy mix could be set in the future and discuss a suggestion that has been made by Alessandra Casella on the proper way to determine the fiscal deficit of the zone.

Daniel Cohen

Papers

Growth and Human Capital: Good Data, Good Results

Growth and Human Capital: Good Data, Good Results

Trust in scientists in times of pandemic: Panel evidence from 12 countries.

Loans or Grants

Why was the Euro Weak? Markets and Policies