The paper examines the role of education in economic growth from both a theoretical and historic perspective, addresses why education has been the limiting factor determining growth historically, provides estimates of the quantitative importance of the direct and indirect effects of education on...

The economics literature identifies three effects of schooling on national income; the direct effect on the earnings of the workers who receive the schooling and the external effects on workers' earnings and on physical capital due to schooling's spillover effect on the productivity of these...

This paper tests the hypothesis that in a market economy investment in physical capital follows investment in schooling. It presents empirical evidence that in periods since the 19th century when global financial capital was widely available, increases in each nation's physical capital stock and...

The marginal product of human capital in Mankiw, Romer, and Weil's [1992] augmented Solow model measures the direct and two external effects of human capital created from schooling on national income. If this model is valid, its estimates of the share of this marginal product accruing to workers...

I use data on cumulative tests, positive tests, and deaths for the coronavirus in South Korea and the U.S. lower-48 states during April 2020 to estimate the extent of infection and the unidentified share of the infected population in each state and in the U.S. as a whole on April 11, 2020. I...

I investigate whether the cross-sectional data on cumulative (symptomatic) cases of coronavirus in the 48 contiguous states of the U.S. at the end of March 2020 provide any evidence that the rate of transmission of the virus declines at higher temperatures. Average temperatures in March varied...

Penn World Table (PWT) 7.0 is the newest PWT data set, based in part on benchmarked prices collected in 2005. In theory the data in PWT 7.0 should be more accurate than the data in PWT 6.3 since 1996 and similar in earlier years. I show that PWT 7.0 GDP/capita and price data for 1970 to 1996...

In 1960 Theodore Schultz expounded a human capital theory of economic growth that includes three elements: 1) Countries without much human capital cannot manage physical capital effectively, 2) Economic growth can only proceed if physical capital and human capital rise together, and 3) Human...

This paper explains why different studies present widely-varying estimates of the effect of increased schooling on national income. It shows that when correctly-interpreted, these studies support the hypothesis that a one-year increase in average schooling attainment raises national income...

Construction prices in developing countries in ICP 2005 are lower relative to prices in developed countries than in earlier versions of the ICP. Our estimates of the Colombia/U.S. ratio of prices for office buildings demonstrate that the ICP 2005 price ratio for these countries is substantially...