International comparative studies of student performance have initiated political discussions in countries all over the world on how to improve the educational achievement of students. The empirical evidence suggests that central exams help to achieve higher student performance. Central exams...

We estimate the relative roles of factor inputs and productivity in explaining the level of economic development, which is measured as output per worker. For a large sample of countries, we show that alternative identifying productivity assumptions and alternative measures of human capital have...

We compare changes in schooling output and in schooling input of six East Asian countries to derive a measure of productivity change. Our results question the impression that all is well with education in East Asia. First, we find that the cognitive achievement of pupils did not change...

Based on Baumol’s cost-disease model, we develop two alternative measures of the change in the productivity of schooling. Both productivity measures are based on changes in the relative price of schooling. We find that in most OECD countries the price of schooling has increased faster in...

Does higher income cause democracy? Accounting for the dynamic nature and highpersistence of income and democracy, we find a statistically significant positive relationbetween income and democracy for a postwar period sample of up to 150 countries. Ourresults are robust across different model...

Nach dem sogenannten PISA-Schock wird insbesondere in Deutschland intensiv diskutiert, wie die Qualität der schulische Ausbildung verbessert werden kann. Dabei herrscht die Überzeugung vor, dass die Qualität der schulischen Ausbildung eine wichtige Determinante des langfristigen...

We estimate changes in the productivity of schooling for six East Asian countries. Our productivity measure is based on changes in the relative price of schooling. A rising price of schooling relative to other labor-intensive service sectors should indicate declining relative schooling...